From the Ashes
by damnedscribblingwoman
Summary: Malfoy had no more attention to spare for Hermione than for any of the expensive trinkets safely kept in glass cases and warded displays. She was simply one more thing he owned, and he owned a lot of things.
1. The Trap

**Originally written for Round 9 of the Dramione Remix. The original couple was Little Red Riding Hood/Big Bad Wolf**

* * *

 **I. Hermione**

Hermione whimpered, the pain still echoing behind her eyes, under her skin, deep in her bones. Warm fingers cupped her face, tilting it up and she tried to focus, tried hard to think around the pain and the nausea and the bone-deep exhaustion.

"Breathe, Granger." Malfoy's voice was soft and gentle. His thumb moved across her cheek, the small parody of a caress. "Tell me what I want to know and it all stops. Aren't you tired?"

She was. Merlin, she was. Tired enough to want to cling to that gentleness; tired enough to want to lean into his touch.

"Go— Go to hell, Malfoy," she said — out of habit or reflex or bullheaded stubbornness — but Draco merely tutted at her, brushing a strand of hair away from her face.

Another Death Eater walked in, and in the few seconds between the door opening and closing, shrill, blood-curdling screams filled the room, together with Bellatrix Lestrange's wild, raucous laughter. A sob rose in Hermione's throat as she glanced at the door, at the glimpse of darkened corridor beyond it, at the two Death Eaters speaking in hushed, hurried tones in the corner. Malfoy shushed her, his fingers steady and warm as they curled around the back of her neck.

"Don't look at them, look at me," he said softly. "You've always been smart, Hermione," he added, and when had he ever called her that? "Be smart about this."

The enchanted rope keeping her tied down to a heavy, old-fashioned armchair tightened slightly around her, the feeling of it oddly comforting, oddly grounding, as if it was the only thing holding her together.

"Please," was all she managed to say, all she had in her to say. She wasn't even sure what she was asking for. Please kill me? Please let me go? "Please."

"Tell me."

But she could only shake her head, choking back a sob, tears falling down her face. She couldn't hold out forever; she knew that. But she could hold out long enough for the others to realise something had gone wrong. For the others to get out. Hermione knew too much; she was privy to too many secrets. If she talked — when she talked — that was that for a large part of the Order.

Malfoy sighed, squeezing the back of her neck before letting his hand fall away.

"Very well."

Hermione gasped as the rope coiled tighter and tighter around her like a snake, digging painfully into her arms and legs, the crushing pressure of it increasing around her chest until she couldn't breathe or think or do anything but panic.

When the Cruciatus curse hit, she did not even have enough air in her lungs to scream.

* * *

The whole thing had been a disaster from the get-go, made worse by the fact that Hermione was rusty and out of practice. She hadn't been out in the field in months, too recognisable and too much of a target to do anything but sit quietly indoors, where it was nice and safe, and Death Eaters couldn't find her.

She was the only surviving member of the Golden Trio and the most well-known Muggle-born in the resistance. She was a symbol, and symbols were meant to be looked at, not put out in the world where bad things could happen to them and damage morale. Or so Moody kept saying. It was a lesson the Order of the Phoenix had learnt the hard way when Ron had fallen during a costly and ultimately pointless skirmish trying to reach Bellatrix's Gringotts vault. The point had been driven home when Harry had been taken out by a Death Curse in broad daylight in Charrington Cross, in the heart of Muggle London. They had yet to recover from it.

So, no, Hermione wasn't given any missions. She was barely given licence to step outside the door. Instead she was given maps, and lists of names, and scraps of information, and told to work out a miracle with their shrinking army and dwindling resources.

It was important, necessary work; it showed trust in her and in her abilities, and she shouldn't have resented it half as much as she did. But she did resent it. Every time they received revised lists of casualties, she resented it a little bit more.

The night it happened, Hermione had been sitting by herself in what had once been the dining room at Number 12 Grimmauld Place. The large wooden table was covered in scrolls and maps, and she was busy frowning at the wildly inaccurate plans they had of Gringotts. There was a Horcrux in Bellatrix's vault. They knew that. They had known that for two years, for all the good it had done them. The blasted thing might as well have been on the moon for all that they were likely to get their hands on it. But still Hermione kept taking out the schematics every few weeks and staring at them, hoping for inspiration, hoping for a miracle.

The house was quiet, the only sound the soft crackling of the fire and the rhythmic tick-tock of the grandfather clock, so when a loud bang echoed by the front door, Hermione almost jumped out of her skin. She shoved to her feet, instinctively drawing her wand before recognising Ginny's voice calling for help.

She ran towards the noise, but Molly Weasley beat her to it, falling to her knees next to Padma Patil, who was barely conscious, dark blood staining her robes.

"Someone talked," Ginny said, easing Padma down all the way to the floor. There was a red smudge on her cheek. "The Sigma cell is collapsing." Hermione cursed under her breath, reaching for the Galleon she always kept in her pocket, but Ginny's urgent, "No, don't," halted the movement. "One of the Death Eaters had one. If the Ministry is monitoring it, it will give away the whole network."

Hermione almost roared in frustration. She touched her wand to the Galleon, ending the enchantment, turning the dozens of enchanted Galleons safely tucked away in the pockets and purses of members and informants of the Order of the Phoenix into regular Galleons, cutting off their connection to the Order, cutting off their connection to each other.

"Who do they have?" Hermione asked, flicking her wand at a stretch of empty wall. The lights dimmed in the hallway as shiny dots appeared against the dark wallpaper, connected by thin trails of light.

"Macmillan for sure." Ginny's hands were shaking as she tried and failed to open a corked vial. Arabella Figg, who had rushed in carrying bandages, gently took it away from her, nudging her aside and kneeling on the opposite side of Padma from Mrs Weasley. "I think Hannah Abbott might have been in the house as well. I'm not sure."

Hermione stared at the wall, trying to think. It was only a matter of time before Macmillan gave away the identity of everyone else in his cell, and that was assuming the Death Eaters didn't know it already. There was no helping any of them. Not without the Galleons; not quickly enough for it to matter.

"Mrs Figg," she said anyway, without looking away from the wall. "Send owls to Katie Bell, Florean Fortescue, Tom Belcher and Hannah Abbot. Tell them to go to ground."

Ginny came to stand next to Hermione as Mrs Figg hurried away, and they both stared at the starry map. Ginny couldn't see it like Hermione could, not with any level of detail. For her it was just bright dots on a dark background, no names or locations. Even Hermione would forget all of it the moment she let the spell fall. Ginny pointed at two dots on each side of the Sigma cluster, the two where Sigma and its neighbouring cells intersected.

"And those?"

"Neville and Tabitha Jorkins. We have to get to them before the Death Eaters do, or we'll lose the Rho and Tau cells as well." And the cells next to them, and the cells next to those, on and on like a row of dominoes.

"I'll take Neville," Ginny said, pulling the hood of her cloak over her head.

"I'll take Mrs Jorkins," Hermione said.

"Neither of you is going anywhere." Mrs Weasley looked up just long enough to glare at them, before a whimper from Padma turned her attention back to the injured witch. "If they got to them already, they will be waiting for you."

"If they did, we have to know." Hermione let the spell fall, and the lights in the hallway brightened.

"And if they didn't, we have to contain this, or the whole system unravels." Ginny knelt down next to Padma and carefully removed her cloak, despite Mrs Weasley's objections and Padma's pained gasp. She threw it at Hermione. "Here. You know the Apparition sequence?"

"Yeah."

"Don't stray from the path." Ginny pulled Hermione to her, hugging her tight. "And don't get yourself killed."

"You too."

"Ginny. Hermione. Girls."

But neither of them paid Mrs Weasley any mind. Ginny leaned over her mum and kissed the top of her head before rushing to catch up to Hermione, who was already on the front steps of Number 12.

"If it comes to it," Ginny said when the door swung shut behind them, "don't let them take you alive." And with that she Disapparated. Hermione took a deep breath and pulled the hood of the bright red cloak over her head before doing likewise.

Fred and George had come up with the cloaks, one of the last things they'd worked on before Fred's death, before George had decided he really didn't care whether or not he was on the receiving end of an Unforgivable, so long as he didn't have to move. The cloaks were enchanted to mask magical displacement, the sort that occurred when someone Apparated or Disapparated. The puppet Ministry under Voldemort's control had taken to tracking Apparition as a way to pinpoint 'illegal' activity.

Even with the cloaks, it was impossible to completely conceal the energy signatures of Apparition, particularly over longer distances, so the Order had established fixed Apparition points and warded them against detection. It made travelling by Apparition slow and troublesome, since they had to know where the safe spots were and then follow the path by skipping from one to the other to reach any given destination, but it was safer than the alternative. For the most part.

Hermione muttered the Apparition sequence under her breath, trying to remember, trying to hurry, trying not to fall flat on her face. The world blurred in and out of existence as she skipped from location to location to location, Apparating and Disapparating in the fraction of a second, all the while praying she could reach her destination without splinching herself or stepping outside the safe areas. All the while praying she could make it in time.

When she reached the Apparition point closest to Tabitha Jorkins's house, she cast a Disillusionment Charm on herself and forced herself not to run. The spell could only do so much.

She kept glancing worriedly at the dark park around her as she walked, on the lookout for anything out of place, for anything that might spell disaster. Lampposts along the path cast dark shadows on the ground and gusts of wind shook the leaves of nearby trees, grating on Hermione's frayed nerves. She tightened the fingers around her wand and gritted her teeth.

Mrs Jorkins's house was a small, two-storey building at the end of a cul-de-sac, surrounded by a generous garden that separated it from the neighbouring houses. The path through the park led to the back of the house. It was late in the evening, but not so late that most people would already be abed, and Hermione could see light in the windows of most of the houses. Everything seemed as it should be. There was no commotion, no signs of a struggle, no Dark Mark over any of the houses.

Hermione walked towards the back of the house and knocked. A little girl answered the door and looked up Hermione, expectantly. She couldn't have been more than twelve years old, with bright red hair and serious green eyes.

"Is your grandmother home?" Hermione asked.

The girl stood aside without a word, motioning for Hermione to get in. Hermione walked past her and followed the direction indicated by the girl's outstretched hand.

"Mrs Jorkins?" she called, hurrying past the dark kitchen and down a corridor, towards the light coming from a room at the end of the hallway.

Tabitha Jorkins was an elegant woman of advanced age, who for over fifty years had worked as personal assistant to over a dozen Ministers for Magic, and who firmly believed that the hostile takeover of the Ministry by the inbred rabble led by He Who Must Not Be Named was no reason why that should change. After all, whoever was in power, memos still had to be filed. And if copies of said memos sometimes found their way to the hands of certain persons said to be affiliated with illegal organisations, why, she was sure she could not account for it.

Hermione found her in a small living room, standing by a window. She wore dark green robes and her hair was a mass of white curls, perfectly coiffed, not a strand out of place. She turned when Hermione walked in, looking at her from behind old-fashioned spectacles, and the thought came to Hermione unbidden, _"My, grandmother, what big eyes you have."_

"Mrs Jorkins, we have to go. Right now. Death Eaters are on their way."

Mrs Jorkins did not move. She glanced at a point behind Hermione with a raised eyebrow, and Hermione could feel more than hear the little girl a short distance away.

"Come closer, child," Mrs Jorkins said to Hermione.

"If we don't go now, it will be too late. Please, Tabitha, we have to—" But just then Hermione caught a glance of Mrs Jorkins's wand, and she knew it already was too late. "Expelliarmus!" she yelled, and whipped to the side, narrowly avoiding being hit by the hex cast by the girl behind her. Her own spell had missed, and Hermione cast a desperate shield just in time to absorb Tabitha Jorkins's stun.

 _My, grandmother, what sharp teeth._

"Two Death Eaters for one little Muggle-born witch?" she said, frantically trying to think of a way out. "It's almost enough to make me feel important."

"Drop the wand, Granger," Jorkins said, edging towards her. He was between Hermione and the window, while the clearly-not-so-little girl stood between Hermione and the door.

"Bite me, Malfoy." Hawthorn, ten inches, unicorn hair. She had seen that wand often enough during their years at Hogwarts to recognise it now. "If you want it, come and get it."

Hermione cast a shield just in time to deflect his curse, the violence of it forcing her back another step that she could ill-afford. There weren't many steps left between her and the wall.

"The Dark Lord will reward us richly for this night's work." The little girl's smile was a predatory grin. "That we should be the ones to deliver the Mudblood to him."

No doubt he would, but they had to catch her first. Without giving herself time to think better of it, Hermione flicked her wand at a spot high above their heads, and Fiendfyre exploded against the opposing wall with a roaring sound, showering the room with sparks and bolts of fire.

The girl yelped, and Hermione took the opening to hit her with a stun that sent her sprawling towards the inferno that was quickly engulfing the small, cluttered room. The girl's panicked shrieks as her clothes caught fire drowned Hermione's pained gasp as Malfoy's Sectumsempra grazed her arm. She shot a stun back his way that missed by a mile, but Malfoy was quickly becoming the least of her problems. In a matter of seconds flames had spread over walls and tapestries and furniture, and if she didn't get out now, she wasn't going to. Malfoy lifted his wand, but just then a burst of fire exploded close to the ceiling, knocking them both down.

Hermione scrambled to her feet, bolting for the door. Trails of fire followed along the walls and ceiling as she ran down the corridor, past the kitchen and out the back door. She ran towards the park without looking back, without pausing to check if anyone was following. She couldn't Disapparate; she had been trying since she had realised it was a trap. There was no telling how far their wards extended, but she hoped that if she made it to the Order's Apparition point, she'd be able to get away. She just had to keep running.

A flash of red hit the grass close to her feet, missing her by an inch, and Hermione's heart jumped. She shot back a jinx over her shoulder without looking, trying to run faster. There was movement at the edge of her vision as dark shadows flashed around her, because of course their bloody wards wouldn't keep _them_ grounded. Hermione hissed in frustration that quickly turned to horror when two Death Eaters Apparated right in front of her. She came to a grinding halt, turning frantically around for a way out, but she was surrounded. Cloaked figures closed in around her, their grotesque masks catching the soft light of the full moon.

"My, my, my," one of them said, and Hermione recognised Rabastan Lestrange. "Look what the cat dragged out."

There were six of them and just one of her, and Hermione did the one thing she could do. She turned her wand on herself, the Death Curse on her lips, but before she could finish the cast, a Disarming Charm hit her square in the arm, sending her wand flying.

"I told you to drop it."

Hermione spun around, holding her arm to her chest, and watched as Malfoy walked past two of the Death Eaters that stood in a circle around her. Mrs Jorkins was gone, and this was Draco Malfoy as Hermione knew him — fair skin and blond hair, and cold grey eyes that had never looked at her with anything but contempt or disapproval.

"I'm surprised to see you, Malfoy," she said, just managing to keep her voice steady. "Who's making sure your batty mother doesn't choke on her own drool while you're out playing dress-up?"

His smile was a sharp, bitter thing that carried no humour. "There's a fine line between bravery and stupidity, Granger; anyone ever tell you that?"

"Is it true she was found naked, fucking a house-elf on the living room floor?"

Hermione did not even register him disappearing before he was suddenly behind her, his left hand clutched painfully around her throat. The Death Eaters around them laughed and cheered as Hermione clawed at Malfoy's hand, struggling to breathe.

"She's a feisty one, Malfoy," one of them taunted. "Think you can handle her?"

"You can't make me kill you," he said, his breath warm against her ear. "I suggest you stop trying."

But despite the words, he did not let up the pressure on her throat, did not give in an inch even as she desperately tried to pry his fingers away. The last thing Hermione saw before passing out was the Dark Mark floating high above Tabitha Jorkins's burning house.

* * *

The whole world dwarfed to boundless, endless, uninterrupted pain, and Hermione couldn't breathe or think or do anything but scream. Eventually she couldn't even do that. When she finally broke, words fell from her lips, tripping over themselves in their haste to reveal all the things she knew, all the secrets she had sworn to take to her grave.

"Good girl," Malfoy said, briefly dropping his hand on her head before stepping away, but Hermione barely heard him, barely noticed that the screams in the room next door had also gone silent.

Her thoughts were a jumbled, tattered mess, and the more she tried to focus on any one thing, the more it all slipped away like smoke. She wasn't sure what she had said, wasn't sure whom she had named. The only thing she knew for sure, the only thing she knew with perfect clarity, was that when it had come down to it, the great Hermione Granger had been all too glad to sell out her soul for a moment's peace.


	2. The Prisoner

She turned a corner and her legs gave out, sending her crashing against a sideboard. Pain exploded against her side, but she ignored it, scrambling to her feet, panic driving her forward down the dark corridor. Moonlight shone through tall, wide windows, too faint to show the way, but bright enough to cast everything in shadow. Soft pops and high-pitched voices chased after her, and she ran down a flight of stairs, narrowly avoiding losing her footing. Portraits came to life all around her — shouting orders, warning her pursuers, telling her to stop this foolishness.

She tripped on one of the last steps, landing heavily on the marble floor, but barely registered the pain before she was up again, making a dash for the massive wooden door she had spotted from the gallery above. She struggled with the lock, her fingers made clumsy by dread and haste, but before she could find a way to open it, the whole thing changed before her eyes, wood and metal turning to cold, hard stone.

The strangled, frustrated sound that drew out of her was cut short by a glimpse of movement from the corner of her eye, and she whipped around to find her pursuers slowly drawing closer to her. They were small and unarmed, but creatures that did not require a wand to produce magic could never be harmless, and she looked around frantically for anything to defend herself with.

When she spotted him slowly walking down the stairs, she froze, suddenly unable even to breathe. And then she darted towards a door to her left, knocking down the one house-elf that got in her way.

She ran across the dining room to the door opposite the one she had come in through, but it was locked, and no matter how many times she desperately turned the handle, it refused to open.

"Granger," came his voice, only a few feet away, and she almost sobbed. She darted for the corner of the room, away from the door, away from the soft moonlight coming in through the windows, away from him. The corner was cast in shadow, and she made herself as small as she could, curling up on herself, knees pulled up to her chest.

The rustling of fabric and the displacement of air gave away his location as he knelt on the floor next to her, but she refused to lift her head, refused to look at him with the stubborn determination of a child, as if being unable to see him meant he couldn't see her either.

A hand touched her head and she flinched, choking back a whimper, but all he did was bury his fingers in her hair, his voice soft and steady as he spoke. She couldn't grasp the words, couldn't follow their meaning, could do nothing but sit there, shaking and trying to breathe around the terror and the panic and the tears that threatened to choke her.

He kept on talking, his tone low and soothing. It was a solid counterpoint to the chaos inside her mind and she couldn't help latching on to it, to the steady sameness of it. When he pulled her to him, she went, clinging to him as if to keep from drowning. Warm arms wrapped themselves around her, and for a moment she forgot why she was supposed to be afraid. And then he reached for something someone handed to him and brought a cup to her lips, and it all came crashing back.

"No," she protested, trying to push away, but he tightened the arm around her, and moved his other hand away to stop the drink from spilling.

"Easy," he said, his breath warm against her skin. "It won't harm you. I promise."

"Please." She tried to push his arm away, but he was stronger than she was, and she was exhausted. "Please, no," she repeated, her voice thick with tears.

"I'm not asking, Hermione," he said, pressing a kiss to her temple. "Don't make me make you."

She took the offered cup with a sob, barely able to see it or him through the tears, and lifted it to her lips with shaking fingers. The concoction was a vile, sickly-sweet thing that immediately had her gagging, but Malfoy did not allow her to lower the cup, keeping it in place until she had drank every last drop.

"There," he said when it was done, tightening his arms around her. "That's it. It's okay. You're okay."

"I— I don't know anything else. Please. I don't know anything else."

He shushed her, his voice soft and low. "I know. It's okay. You're okay. Relax now."

"Please," she repeated, her eyes getting heavier. "I don't— I don't know anything else."

She struggled to stay awake, but it was a losing battle. One more losing battle.

Hermione had no energy left even to keep her eyes open; she had no energy left even to lift her head from where it was leaning on Malfoy's chest.

And then the whole world went dark.

* * *

Waking up was like coming up for air after a long dive. For a moment Hermione couldn't remember where she was or what had happened, and then it all came rushing back: Ginny and the Sigma cell and Tabitha Jorkins and the Death Eaters; Draco Malfoy's questions deep in the bowels of the Ministry.

Merlin, what had she said?

She sat up on the lavish bed, trying to think, trying to remember, but it was all a jumbled mess that she couldn't begin to untangle. Her head felt heavy and full of cotton; the simple act of sitting up took effort.

Hermione pushed the duvet back and swung her legs to the side of the bed before getting up. She swayed in place for a moment before regaining her balance, gritting her teeth and ignoring the weakness in her legs and arms. She was alive. For now, that was all that mattered.

She looked out the window. It was early dawn. The sun had yet to rise, but the sky had already started to brighten. Swans and ducks swam in a pond, and manicured gardens stretched as far as Hermione could see. There were trees in the distance, but no houses, no sign that anyone else lived anywhere near.

She turned away, and in doing so caught her own reflection in the mirror by the far wall. She padded towards it, the carpet soft under her feet. Her skin was ashen, and there were dark circles under her eyes, but that was not what caught her attention. She lifted a hand to touch the dark collar around her neck, feeling the leather under her fingers, tracing the runes etched into it.

The egotistical, arrogant fools. That's why they hadn't killed her.

Since Voldemort's rise to power, it had been open season on Muggle-born wizards and witches. British Muggle-borns had been hunted down and dragged out of their homes, and locked away in cages like animals. Some had been executed or left to starve in Azkaban, surrounded by Dementors, but the Ministry had soon realised there was profit to be made, and so it passed a law whereby anyone found to be impersonating a wizard or witch — and it was the official position of the Ministry that all Muggle-borns _were_ impersonating a wizard or witch — would be held in bondage and sold to any pure-blood who wished to buy them.

There hadn't been many takers, even among the not inconsiderable segment of the pure-blood population that looked down on Muggle-borns. As it turned out, after a life of slavish devotion from their family house-elves, the upper crust of wizarding society was ill-equipped to deal with slaves likely to slit their throats in the dead of night.

Still, it hadn't stopped a great many deal of Death Eaters from acquiring themselves a pet or two, and it wasn't unheard of for Voldemort to reward his lieutenants with their choice of entertainment from the Ministry dungeons.

Hermione quietly made her way to the door, ignoring the cold and the dizziness and the almost-paralysing fear. She did not have the time to indulge in any of it. Taking a moment to listen and hearing no sound, she turned the handle. The unlocked door led to a corridor filled with portraits and tapestries and expensive-looking furniture. The occupants of the portraits she could see from where she stood were still asleep. Careful not to wake them, Hermione closed the door again, as quietly as possible.

Shoes. She needed shoes. And something to wear that wasn't a nightdress. She rummaged through the drawers, grabbing a set of robes and finding a pair of shoes by the foot of the bed.

It should not surprise her that whoever was keeping her here had not seen fit to so much as lock the door. Death Eaters thought themselves so above everyone else — certainly so above the likes of her — that it made them careless. Well, that was their mistake.

The collar would stop her from using magic, but Hermione did not have a wand anyway, so the point was moot. There were plenty of non-magical ways to disappear. If she could get far enough away before anyone realised she was gone, she might just make it. And if not… Well, she still had to try.

She slipped out of the room, closing the door behind her. The corridor opened to a gallery and to a large stairwell, but Hermione headed away from it. It only took one portrait to notice her for her grand escape to be doomed before it started. She needed a way downstairs that did not lead through the main parts of the house.

Finding it was not difficult. Closer to the other end of the corridor, a door blended into the wall, and if Hermione hadn't been looking for it, she might have missed it. It led to a narrow stairwell, one of the no doubt many back passages meant for servants.

She made her way carefully, listening for any sound from above or below, but managed to reach the lower floor without incident.

And then someone laughed up ahead, a shrill, high-pitched voice, and Hermione froze, her heart hammering in her chest. Other voices rose in an excited chattering, and she let out a breath. House-elves. She was near the kitchens.

Carefully pressing ahead, she spotted a heavy door at the end of a corridor. Jackpot.

The sound of voices got louder as she approached an open door off to the side. Hermione peered inside, praying that no one chose that exact moment to look in her direction. A house-elf was sitting at a table, with a book opened in front of her, surrounded by at least ten others, who giggled as she regaled them with what was, from what little Hermione could hear, a vivid and painstakingly detailed description of the drawings in _The Tales of Beedle the Bard_.

Some distance away, another house-elf was giving the lot of them a look of pure disgust.

"Misty is being lazy," she accused. "Misty is making everyone else lazy too."

"Pah," Misty said, turning a page. "It's not lazy if it's before the master and mistress are up."

"It is too. Misty is as bad as Dobby."

Misty gasped in outrage and shoved to her feet, hurling the book at the other house-elf's head.

"Ziggy will take that back!"

With the house-elves distracted trying to keep those two off each other, Hermione slipped quietly past the open door and darted to the door at the end of the passage. The door creaked when she opened it, but the commotion from the kitchen drowned the sound, and Hermione closed it quickly behind her.

The grounds around the house had little in the way of hiding places so she did not try to find a way to conceal herself, but made for the trees in the distance. If she made it out of the open, she might just make it. If she made it to the trees, she might just make it. If she managed to get quickly enough and far enough away before anyone noticed she was gone, she might just make it.

It was a lot of ifs.

Her luck lasted long enough for her to make it to the trees; it lasted long enough that she could no longer see the house. And then the collar around her neck started to grow tighter and tighter with each step. Doing her best to ignore it, Hermione pressed forward, pushing against the invisible bonds of the spell, willing herself to keep going despite the way the leather dug into her skin and made it increasingly harder to breathe.

And then she couldn't go any farther. She couldn't go any farther, and she couldn't go back, and she couldn't even stand anymore, she was so winded. Gravel cut painfully into her hands and knees as she fell to the ground, but Hermione barely even noticed it as she desperately gasped for air. She didn't notice the gravel, or the footsteps, or the man, not until he knelt down in front of her.

"I once saw a dog choke itself on its own leash," Malfoy said, lifting a hand to her face and tilting it up so that she was looking at him. "I didn't think it very smart then either."

Hermione meant to slap his hand away, but seized his wrist instead, clutching it as she struggled to remain conscious. Before she could pass out, the familiar pull of Apparition changed the world around her, gravel turning to polished wood, and green canopies giving way to stone walls and a high ceiling.

The pressure on her throat lifted so suddenly that she almost choked on the sudden influx of air, and for several moments she could do nothing but cough and wheeze and try to catch her breath.

"Why—" she tried after a moment, her voice cracking. "Why not just kill me and be done with it? You took— You took everything. There's nothing else. I've got— I've got no secrets left. What could you possibly want with me?"

"Oh, I'm sure I'll think of something," he said, still far too close. Malfoy hadn't moved from where he'd knelt down in front of her.

Hermione's laughter was a bitter, broken thing. "Lay a hand on me and I'll tear your heart out." She did not need a wand to make good on that promise.

Malfoy smirked, cupping her face with steady fingers. "You overestimate your charms, Granger," he said before pulling his hand away. "Or my interest. The Dark Lord might have meant to honour me by making a gift of you, but you're a nuisance I'd rather have done without, and don't you forget it. Now, if it's all the same to you, can I have my hand back?"

Heat flooded her face as she realised she was still clinging to his other hand, and she let go as if burned. He chuckled, rocking back on his heels and shoving to his feet.

"You have the freedom of the house. You can walk through any door you can open." His voice acquired a mocking edge as he added, "Though I'd stay clear of the gardens, if I were you." He was almost at the door when he turned back. "And Granger," he said, "my mother is in delicate health. Bother her in any way and you'll find my hospitality less to your liking."


	3. The Square

Malfoy Manor was a very large, very lavish mausoleum. Malfoy was seldom around, and when he happened to be in the house, he had no more attention to spare for Hermione than for any of the expensive trinkets safely kept in glass cases and warded displays — a chess set once owned by Salazar Slytherin, an ancient vase that would've cost someone's yearly income and then some, the collection of historical wands warded off in the library. She was simply one more thing he owned, and he owned a lot of things.

Hermione came across Narcissa Malfoy on that very first day. Malfoy's mother, who was sitting by herself in the conservatory, surrounded by flowers, looked like a hollowed-out shell of her former self. Her frame was thin and frail, her expression vacant. She glanced at Hermione and then away, staring at the distance with sunken eyes. The tea set on the small table next to her was undisturbed, the plate of biscuits untouched. Hermione took a step towards her unthinkingly, but a house-elf immediately appeared at Hermione's side and grabbed her hand, pulling her away.

"No, no, no," he said, tugging on her hand until she followed. "You mustn't disturb the mistress."

The house-elves mostly stayed away. Hermione's presence in the house unnerved them; it disturbed the natural order of things. She was a guest who wasn't a guest, who was a witch, who was a slave, who wasn't a house-elf. They didn't know what to make of that, and they didn't want to have to make anything of that, except that they must, so they dealt with her by staying well away while still making sure she had everything she might need — regular meals and comfortable clothing, and a tidy bedroom where a fire was always lit.

And yet, despite their wariness, they were never shy about making themselves known whenever Hermione got too close to Narcissa. The house-elves at Malfoy Manor were devoted to their mistress, and doted on her like angry mother hens ready to defend their chick against dubious lodgers of uncertain social status and unknown intentions. It was an endless chorus of _"You mustn't tire the mistress," "The mistress mustn't be disturbed," "The mistress is resting,"_ and on one memorable occasion, _"If Hermione Granger takes another step, Misty will bite her."_ (Hermione hadn't even noticed Narcissa was in the room. The woman was practically a ghost.)

The house-elves also did not like it when Hermione got too close to places where she was not meant to be.

"Hermione Granger can't go in there," said Flix, one of the younger ones.

Hermione bit her lip to keep from snapping at him. It wasn't his fault that he and his kind actually liked the collars around their necks. Hers was making her feel increasingly claustrophobic.

"What's in here?" she asked instead, pressing her palm to the door.

"The master's laboratory," Flix said, before repeating, "Hermione Granger can't go in there."

No, she couldn't. Not yet. But now she knew where it was. Hermione couldn't use magic, but there was plenty she could accomplish with a cauldron and the right ingredients.

The house-elves weren't the only ones keeping an eye on her. Malfoys of ages past watched from gilded frames as Hermione wandered from room to room, their lips a thin line of silent condemnation. Perhaps they had strong opinions on slavery. Perhaps they had strong opinions on Mudbloods.

Their silence grew heavier as Hermione made her way past locked doors and deserted corridors to find herself in the drawing room. It looked much like Hermione remembered it, with its crystal chandelier and marble fireplace and portraits hung on purple walls. She looked around and could almost see the scene as it had been back then: Bellatrix's Dark Mark shifting and changing as she whipped her wand right before pain exploded in and all around Hermione; Narcissa pale and wide-eyed, clutching her husband's arm as if it were the only thing keeping her upright; Malfoy, young and terrified and still refusing to give Harry up.

Hermione remembered thinking that there really was some good to be found in everyone, even in him, this boy who would go on to claw his way to the top of Voldemort's high command over the broken bodies of Muggles and wizards and his own masked brethren.

Stupid, naive girl.

Malfoy was seldom around, but his presence still clung to Hermione like a spectre. He was there when she closed her eyes, there when she couldn't sleep, there when every shadow seemed to move just at the edge of her vision. Sometimes Hermione could still feel the enchanted ropes holding her down; sometimes she could still see him standing over her, asking questions she could not answer, dragging answers out of her with kind words and soft hands and cruel spells.

Other times the Malfoy inside her head wasn't the one in the dark robes and Death Eater mask, but a made-up, make-believe fantasy with warm lips and soft laughter, and eyes that lit up whenever they looked at her. He felt real and solid, his arms warm and familiar around her, and Hermione invariably woke to an almost overwhelming sense of longing and loss, and enough self-loathing to drown in.

That her mind kept replaying the things he had done to her was bad, but this was worse. And as much as she hated him in those moments, she hated herself more, despised whatever weak, pathetic part of herself made her look to him for comfort, to this man who had cracked her mind open just to look inside, who had presumed to put a collar around her neck as if she were a thing he could claim as his own.

She took that rage — at him, at herself — and used it to shore up all the parts of her that felt close to crumbling. He had not broken her; she would not break. Bellatrix hadn't managed it, and neither would Draco Malfoy. Whatever else he took, Hermione remembered who she was.

She still kept her distance whenever he was in the manor, which wasn't often. It wasn't difficult. It was a big house, with plenty of places in which to hide and pretend it did not make her a coward. He, for his part, seemed happy to just let her be. Sometimes Hermione wondered whether he even remembered she was there.

And then one day, she did not have to wonder.

"The master wishes to see Hermione Granger," Misty said, suddenly by her side.

"What does he want?"

"It is not for Misty to question the master."

That it wasn't for Hermione to question him either went unsaid.

"I'll be down in a minute."

"Hermione Granger must go now."

"Hermione Granger will be down in a minute," she said, the irritation in her voice preferable to the fear coiling in her stomach.

Misty glared, and for a second Hermione thought she might reach towards her and Apparate them both downstairs, but the house-elf contented herself with giving her a look of profound disapproval before Disapparating with a soft pop. Hermione took a sort of grim satisfaction in it. She might be no more than a usurper to Malfoy and his ilk, a Muggle upstart bent on aping and deceiving her betters, but the house-elves at Malfoy Manor knew a witch when they saw one, and there were lines they would not cross.

She made herself get up from the window seat and forced herself to calmly make her way downstairs. She was a witch. No matter what he did to her, no matter what he made her do, she was a witch. A witch and a Gryffindor and a member of the Order of the Phoenix, and one day she'd show him exactly what that meant. She could wait.

She found Malfoy in his study, sitting behind a large oak desk that put Hermione strongly in mind of the one in the Headmaster's office, at Hogwarts.

"We're going out," he said without looking up from the note he was writing. "There's a dress on your bed. Go put it on."

Hermione felt her face heat up. "And if I don't?" The defining characteristic of Gryffindor House wasn't bravery; it was stubbornness. Stubbornness and pride.

Malfoy looked up, grey cold eyes meeting hers. "How difficult do you imagine it would be for me to Imperio you?"

The relaxed casualness in his tone cut deeper than the threat, and humiliation drove everything else from Hermione's mind, even fear. Not trusting herself to speak, she tilted her head in agreement and left the room. One day. One day she would make him pay for all the things he had done — and for this moment in particular. She just had to keep herself alive long enough.

The dress he'd laid out for her was a simple affair: black, with long sleeves and a circle skirt that fell below the knee. Once she'd put it on, the house-elves braided her hair and pinned it up, the better to show off the collar around her neck. And so that no one who saw her would be in any doubt as to whose property Hermione was, Ziggy handed her a silver brooch in the shape of an elaborate M.

Hermione took one look at herself in the mirror and almost gave in to the powerful urge to smash it.

"That will do," Malfoy said when she walked back into the study, his face an unreadable mask. And then he flicked his wand. " _Imperio_."

The spell hit her like a brick wall, and Hermione staggered back, indignation rising in her throat at the profound unfairness of it. She'd done as he asked. She'd put on the stupid dress like he'd asked.

"Stop fighting me, you little fool," Malfoy said, taking a step towards her, and the weight of his mind pressing down on hers threatened to overwhelm her. Hermione dug her nails into her palms, closing her eyes against the sharp pain in her temple.

"Stop— Stop it," she managed, each word dragged out of her as she tried hard to fight him off, but it was like fighting an avalanche. One moment she was struggling to keep her footing and the next the world shifted, and there was nothing left but a white, silent landscape.

Being under the influence of the Imperius Curse was like being underwater. The part of Hermione who was herself was still there, but everything was muted. The whole world existed in sepia tones, soft and unhurried and far away.

Malfoy closed the space between them and lifted a hand to her cheek. "There," he said, slightly out of breath. "Was that so very hard?"

No. No, it hadn't been. Hermione couldn't think why she had been so very angry just a minute before, why everything had seemed so urgent. There was no urgency now. There was only a quiet sort of contentment, as if all the worries in the world had vanished and there was only peace and tranquillity and stillness.

"Follow me," Malfoy said, heading for the large marble fireplace, and Hermione followed, not once thinking not to. He took a handful of Floo powder and put an arm around her waist before throwing the powder at the flames and saying in a clear voice, "Borgin and Burkes."

Caractacus Burke almost dropped a golden statuette when Draco Malfoy suddenly appeared in his shop.

"Mr Malfoy, sir," he said. "A very great honour."

Malfoy spared him barely a glance. "Just passing through, Burke."

Knockturn Alley was deserted and most of the shops were closed despite the early hour. The few people they came across — an elderly man in threadbare robes; a witch carrying a large bag with a suspiciously dark stain on the bottom — hurried their step on spotting them, and quickly ducked into a shop or turned onto the next street.

Diagon Alley was no better. Hermione glanced distractedly at the closed signs, at the shuttered windows, but did not remark on them, did not even register what she saw. Her only focus, the only thing bright and clear in her mind, was Malfoy and the need to make sure she followed, that she did not fall behind. She did not notice the empty shops or the lack of people; she did not notice their steps echoing in the otherwise silent street. When the sound of voices reached them, growing louder the closer they got to Nevin Square, that too failed to make an impression.

The square was a sea of colourful robes and pointy hats that moved fitfully as their owners turned or craned or tilted their heads. The crowd shifted and parted for Malfoy and Hermione to pass, and suddenly that mass of people was all around them, their whispers and stares pressing like a boulder against the quiet stillness inside Hermione. She kept her eyes firmly on Malfoy's back and tried hard not to lose him, though it increasingly felt like soon enough she must. There were just too many people standing far too close, and before long Hermione was falling behind, and soon she wouldn't be able to see Malfoy anymore, and what would she do then? He had told her to follow, and she must follow, only she could barely see him now, and what would she do if she lost him?

Malfoy stopped up ahead, turning his head to look for her, and Hermione elbowed her way towards him, her heart in her throat. He held out a hand for her and she grasped it, lightheaded with relief.

They headed for the raised dais at one end of the square, where several Death Eaters lounged on elegant chairs or stood around in small groups, surrounded by floating trays weighed down by champagne flutes and appetisers.

"Malfoy," Anton Dolohov said, raising his glass by way of greeting.

"Dolohov." Malfoy picked up a glass from a floating tray. "I trust everything is ready?"

"Naturally."

Hermione glanced towards the other end of the crowded square and a spike of emotion shot through the pleasant haze in her brain. A scaffold had been built directly across from them, and at least a dozen rope nooses already hung from a wooden beam. And though she couldn't think why, though she couldn't follow the thread of her own thoughts, the one thing going through her mind over and over again was, _"What did I say? Who did I name? Merlin, what did I say?"_

Malfoy reached back for her without turning, his fingers brushing against her arm, and that was enough to smooth over all the sharp edges of her brain. Hermione drew closer to him, all thoughts of gallows and blame and guilt gone from her mind.

She tensed up almost immediately, however, when another wizard wrapped his fingers around her jaw, tilting her face towards him.

"She's a pretty little thing, Malfoy. I'd pay good money for a taste."

"Don't touch my things, Karkaroff," Malfoy said evenly, but it was enough for Igor Karkaroff to let go immediately.

"I meant no disrespect." He simpered, opening his arms and making an exaggerated obeisance. "But if I have offended, let me make up for it by offering the services of one of my own slaves." He snapped his fingers and a tall, lanky figure in shapeless, grey clothes stepped closer to him. He had a collar around his neck, just like Hermione's, but that wasn't what got her attention. He looked familiar, though she couldn't place him, though she couldn't think. "He's not much to look at," Karkaroff said, placing a possessive hand on the back of his neck, "but he's a very accomplished cocksucker. Aren't you, pet?" The young man said nothing, his gaze trained firmly on the ground, but a faint blush spread across his skin. Karkaroff's fingers tightened around his neck and he gasped. "Aren't you?"

"Yes— Yes, master."

Dennis. That's who he was; that's how Hermione knew him. He was Colin's brother.

Malfoy looked at them with distaste. "That won't be necessary."

Dolohov made to speak, but just then a commotion heralded the arrival of more Death Eaters.

"What is _she_ doing here?" Karkaroff said too loudly, at the same time Dolohov muttered under his breath, "Well, that's a surprise."

Bellatrix Lestrange marched past the assembled Death Eaters, ignoring them all with the casual disregard of the very powerful. None of them got so much as a nod of acknowledgement — not even Yaxley, who had served He Who Must Not Be Named for just as long as she had; not even Macnair, whose body count was likely higher than even hers.

Bellatrix had eyes for only one person.

"Aunt," Malfoy said, bowing his head. "You honour us with your presence."

"I do," Bellatrix agreed, walking past him. She circled Hermione, lifting a hand to her back, her hair, the curve of her neck. "Now, now, kitten," she said, low and intimate, and despite Malfoy's iron grip on her mind, Hermione could feel Bellatrix's magic tugging at her, drawing her in. "Whoever gave you permission to fall into anyone's trap but mine?" Hermione dropped her gaze to Bellatrix's lips and the other woman smirked. "It's not nice to steal other people's toys, Draco, darling," she said, sweet and dangerous. Behind her, Barty Crouch snickered.

"Perhaps not," Malfoy said, his voice loud and clear like a bell in Hermione's mind. "But unlike you, aunt, I know how to hold on to what's mine. Granger, come here."

And just like that, Bellatrix's siren song lost its grip on Hermione, who pulled away, a heavy weight lifted from her mind. Around them, all the Death Eaters had gone very still.

Bellatrix tilted her head, bird-like, the chilling smile on her face all delight.

"Foolish child," she said, the affection in her tone a cloying thing. "Do you think your place so secure you would challenge me?"

"The Dark Lord values my contribution."

She closed the space between them, her fingers like claws where she gripped Malfoy's jaw. "The Dark Lord values loyalty, my darling boy, and there have been many over the years who've questioned yours."

Rather than pull away, Malfoy leaned in closer, his smile just as sharp and dangerous as hers. "Let them question it to my face." The hubbub of the crowd grew louder as hooded figures in silver masks dragged chained men and women onto the scaffold all the way across the square. "The Dark Lord values results," Malfoy continued, his face only inches away from Bellatrix's. "And can you argue with mine?"

They stared at each other for one long moment, and then Bellatrix's terrible expression broke into a mad grin. "Never," she said, patting his cheek before moving away towards one of the chairs in the middle of the dais. "You do us proud." She sat down, smoothing down her skirt. "But Draco, my love," she added without looking at him. "Challenge me again and I'll rip your heart out of your chest and feed it to a pack of Thestrals."

Malfoy smirked. "Yes, aunt Bella."

He took a chair next to Bellatrix and motioned for Hermione to join him, but Hermione was no longer paying attention. Her gaze was fixed on the scaffold across the square and she found she could not look away. The men and women in chains were barefoot and wore the same shapeless, grey robes. There was something about it, something about _them_ , that kept tugging at Hermione's brain, that kept demanding that she pay attention. The nooses around their necks were just like a collar, just like her collar, but only Mudbloods were put in slave collars, only Mudbloods branded like property and given away like trinkets. Not a collar then. Something else. Someone else.

That room back at the Ministry flashed before her eyes and suddenly it was like being in that chair again, the pain searing and sharp behind her eyes, Malfoy's questions in and all around her.

"Granger."

Malfoy's voice drove away all the thoughts chasing each other inside Hermione's mind and she moved to kneel gracefully on the pillow by the side of his chair. He dropped his hand to the back of her neck and she leaned into the touch, her mind gone pleasantly blank. On the pillow next to hers, Dennis sighed contently as Karkaroff ran distracted fingers through his hair.

All around them, Death Eaters chatted and laughed and needled each other. Karkaroff and Theodore Nott Sr were discussing rising interest rates. Yaxley was educating Rabastan Lestrange on how to tell Elvish Margaux from cheap imports. Amycus Carrow and Thaddeus Avery were laying bets on whose necks would snap, with Alecto Carrow declaring it a fool's wager. Everyone knew Avery cheated.

It was like a social event. It was like a garden party.

The people up on the scaffold across the square did not struggle; they did not put up a fight. It was as if their minds were as still as Hermione's. And then one of the women caught her eye and it was like being struck by lightning. Malfoy's fingers went still on the back of her neck, but Hermione barely noticed. All of her focus, all of her attention was on the woman, on the familiarity of her, even at a distance. And once Hermione could focus on her, it was suddenly easier to focus on all the others.

The snatchers minding the captives had put Ginny front and centre, one more Weasley caught in their net — and they had caught so many. She was flanked by Professor Vector on one side — the Order's last remaining informant inside Hogwarts — and by Ethelbeth Bagnold on the other. Hermione did not even remember knowing Ethelbeth was in the Order, had not even known she was someone she could give away. Tom from the Leaky Cauldron was there too, and the trolley lady from the Hogwarts Express, and Daphne Greengrass, who had once called Hermione a Mudblood when they were eleven, and Lavender Brown, whom Hermione still had not quite forgiven for kissing Ron.

There were others too, people Hermione recognised but did not know. People who had fought for the Order, and bled for the Order, and followed without question the increasingly dangerous and desperate plans Hermione had all but pulled out of a hat from inside the warded safety of Grimmauld Place. And now they were about to hang because of something she'd said, and she didn't even know their names.

She made to move, but Malfoy's hand tightened on the back of her neck, the pressure of his mind on hers suddenly back, suffocating and unrelenting. She pushed back against him, the impotent rage in her chest louder even than the Imperius Curse.

The pain that shot through her was a sharp, living thing, and Hermione could not move, she could not speak, she could do nothing but try to fight off Malfoy's grip on her. All around them, Death Eaters chatted and drank and laughed, and on the square below the crowd was growing loud and restless. Somewhere nearby — somewhere far away? — Bellatrix asked sweetly if Draco required assistance in keeping his pet in line. She'd be oh, so happy to help.

And then a loud noise rang through the air and the whole world went still. Hermione stopped struggling against Malfoy's mental grip so suddenly that for a split second she did not even realise he'd stopped too. And then another loud bang echoed on the unnaturally silent square, and panic rippled through the crowd. People screamed and yelled, moving almost like a wave in their haste to run to safety, shoving and pushing each other out of the way.

A third shot echoed in the square, and Malfoy sprang to his feet, throwing up a magic shield just as Death Eaters started Disapparating, one after another.

Bellatrix hadn't had time even to scream, let alone move. The first shot had hit true, and she'd slumped down on her chair before falling to the ground, next to Hermione, her eyes open and unblinking, the bullet wound on her forehead a delicate, perfect thing. A few feet away, Dennis was sobbing over Karkaroff's fallen body, begging him not to die, begging him not to leave him.

Malfoy took a step forward, and Hermione grabbed the edge of his robes, hating herself for it. He stepped back, closer to her, and dropped a hand on her head. Keeping his wand raised, he carefully surveyed the buildings around them, but no more shots were forthcoming.

A dark shape Apparated in the middle of the open square, fifteen feet up in the air, and the crowd parted with startled alarm as a body fell from the sky. The nauseating sound of the skull hitting the pavement made Hermione flinch.

Barty Crouch Disapparated the moment he dropped the sniper and Apparated again in the middle of the square, in the open space left by the people frantically trying to put some space between them and the dead man.

"Is that all you've got?" he shouted at no one, his voice shrill but clear even at a distance. "Cowardly attacks and Muggle weapons?" He whirled around where he stood next to Colin Creevey's broken body, his eyes wide and manic. "You are insects. You are ants."

More Death Eaters had Apparated up on the scaffold — Yaxley, Avery, Theodore Nott — and Crouch Disapparated only to join them a second later, to the growing alarm of the chained prisoners. Ginny alone did not seem perturbed. She smirked, saying something too low for Hermione to catch. Whatever it was earned her a backhanded slap from the wizard.

Crouch touched his wand to his throat and his voice was loud and clear when he said, "Blood traitors and Muggle-lovers don't deserve anything so clean as a broken neck." He flicked his wand, and suddenly all the nooses were gone and the members of the Order of the Phoenix now stood tied to stakes on top of a large pyre of wood. "You love Muggles so much? This is how they treat our kind."

And with that he set the whole thing on fire.


	4. The Cloak

Malfoy dropped the Imperius Curse the moment they stepped out of the fireplace in his study, and for a moment Hermione had no more reaction than to just stand there.

And then she whipped around and lunged for him, her fingers like claws, grief and guilt turned to rage — at Malfoy, at Voldemort, at herself — and she wanted to kill him, and she wanted to die, and she wanted to forget all about the way Ginny had shrieked when her robes caught fire, or the way Tom was still conscious even as his skin started to melt, or the revolting, sickening smell of burning flesh that still clung to her hair and clothes.

Malfoy easily grabbed one of her wrists and spun her around, crossing her arms over her chest and holding her back against him.

"Enough," he said, his breath warm on her skin, but Hermione only struggled harder, trying to break free, trying to shake him off, badly needing to break something, even if that something was him, even if that something was herself.

Malfoy held her through it, held her even as her rage turned to loud, choking sobs that did not, could not ease any of the misery or the heartbreak or the impotent fury burning inside her. Very soon he was the only thing keeping her upright, and Hermione very much feared that if he let go she might just shatter.

* * *

Dusk had fallen outside and the study was almost entirely cast in darkness when candles started lighting up around the room. Hermione winced, turning her face onto Malfoy's chest, and he kissed the top of her head, tightening the arm he had around her. They were on the small sofa in the middle of the room, Hermione curled up against Malfoy's side, her head pillowed on his chest, his arm a warm, reassuring weight around her. Under different circumstances, she might have noticed the strangeness of it, the sheer _absurdity_ of it, but her anger had burned itself out and she had nothing left to replace it with. Her mind felt sluggish and her thoughts refused to coalesce into anything cogent.

Grief and loss had chipped away at Narcissa Malfoy until she was all but gone, and Hermione had thought herself better than that; she had thought herself tougher than that. She had never once realised that sometimes grief took away by degrees and sometimes all at once — large, big chunks of who a person had once been.

She pushed herself up to a sitting position, and Malfoy let her.

"Hermione," he called when she made her way to the door, but she did not turn and he did not follow her.

Her room was dark and silent; even the fireplace was mercifully empty. She sat at the edge of the bed for a very long time, staring at nothing, surrounded by ghosts. It took her a while to realise that the emotion flickering inside her — the small spark of a thing, barely there until it was — wasn't anger or pain. It was resentment. Much as she loved Ron, much as she loved Harry, much as she desperately missed them both, she resented them too — deeply, angrily, bitterly. She resented them and their quick, clean deaths, and the fact that she alone had lived long enough to see everything and everyone she loved taken away. That she alone had had to learn that when it came down to it, she just wasn't good enough to change any of it or to stop any of it or to do anything about it except make it worse.

Well, no more. Hermione pushed to her feet and made for the door. Maybe they couldn't bring Voldemort and his flunkies down; maybe the whole thing had been doomed from the start. Maybe phoenixes sometimes burned only for nothing to rise from the ashes. But there was at least one Death Eater she could take down, and she would manage at least that much if it was the last thing she did.

She had no wand, nor any magic with which to use one, but Colin Creevey had taken down Bellatrix Lestrange with a Muggle rifle, and there was so much justice in that that Hermione was almost tempted to think everything that followed worth it. Almost.

Wizards and witches bled just like everyone else, after all, and the Death Curse wasn't the only way to kill a person.

It was late, and the house was quiet as she made her way down to the kitchens. Even the house-elves had already retired for the night and she saw no one as she rummaged through cupboards and drawers until she found what she was looking for.

The door to the study was slightly ajar and a sliver of light shone out onto the corridor. Hermione stopped just outside the room, her heart hammering in her chest, the knife a heavy, solid weight in her hand. Only a few hours ago, Malfoy had held her in that very room as she cried, and whispered soothing nothings in her ear, and told her everything would be okay. Hermione remembered it. She could not account for it, but she remembered it.

She remembered other things too. She remembered the Dark Mark over Tabitha Jorkins's house, and pain too great to bear at the Ministry, and the collar he'd put around her neck, and Ginny Weasley burning at the stake. She remembered all of that and much more besides, and she refused to become like Dennis, who'd forgiven much and more for the scraps of kindness and attention and affection given to him like treats by someone who barely saw him as human.

She'd die first. She'd kill him first.

Malfoy did not move when she walked into the room. He was sitting with his back to the door, his feet up on the chair across from him. The bottle of Firewhisky on the table by his side was almost empty.

Hermione hesitated for a moment and then strode across the room to where he was, shifting the knife in her hand for a better grip. The Narcissa on the portrait above the fireplace shouted, "Draco," at the same time Hermione clutched a handful of hair and pulled back hard. He opened his eyes the moment the blade touched his throat, familiar, grey eyes looking up at her, and she found herself frozen in place, unable to do more than stare back.

She knew she ought to finish it, she knew that with every passing second she was wasting the only chance she was likely to get, but she couldn't bring herself to move. There was a thin red line where the blade had nicked the skin, but Malfoy did not struggle, he did not so much as flinch. He was so still he might have been carved in stone.

"Go on," he said, the words drawing her gaze to his lips, and she let go of him as if burned. She took a step back before turning away and making a dash for the door, horror rising in her chest at what she had almost done, at not having done it, at a world in which these were her choices.

The door slammed shut in front of her and she whirled around, fingers tightening instinctively around the handle of the knife she was still holding. Malfoy dropped his wand on the table, but Hermione still backed away as he strode towards her, stopping only when her back hit the door.

"Was that clever?" he asked, leaning into her space, bracing himself on the door. He was close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off him, close enough that she could smell the alcohol in his breath. With his free hand, he reached down for Hermione's right one, the one still holding the knife. She tried to shake it free, but he tightened his grip, forcing it up, making her hold the knife against his chest, over his heart. "Well?" he asked, a challenge. When she didn't answer, he smirked and said, the words slightly slurred, "At least Creevey had the courage of his convictions."

"Let go of me." She tried to jerk her hand free, but he held on, his grip like iron.

"No."

"Draco—"

He froze at her use of his name, and she did too. And then he pushed her back against the door and kissed her, a hard, desperate, bruising kiss that carried with it a world of rage and anger and barely contained violence. The knife clattered on the floor at their feet and Hermione instinctively made to push him off, but he pinned her hands back against the door, his body a solid, hard weight against her.

"Damn you to hell, Hermione," he said low against her ear, and she could feel the tension in every line of his body, could feel him shift away even before he let go of her.

Malfoy marched to the fireplace, grabbing his wand in passing before disappearing into the Floo network, leaving her alone with jumbled thoughts and a troubled mind and the phantom tingling of his lips on hers.

* * *

Malfoy did not go back to the manor that night, nor on any of the nights that followed, and Hermione was grateful for that much at least. He'd scared her, but not half as much as she'd scared herself, and not just because of what she'd almost done. It had been a long, drawn-out war, and no one's hands were clean — not his, not hers, not anyone else's — and Hermione had long ago stopped being particular about the morals of taking someone's life. Maybe there was a fundamental difference between killing someone in the heat of battle and slicing open their throats when they weren't looking, but dead was dead, and Hermione did what she had to do. Scruples were a luxury she could not afford. Scruples were a luxury for peacetime.

What did scare her, what kept nagging at her, was that kiss and the painful, aching familiarity of it, and the way her mind kept going over it, like pressing her tongue to an aching tooth to make sure it still hurt. The whole thing rippled inside her like the echo of something she had no name nor any explanation for, and it was driving her mad.

Her friends were dead, and the Order of the Phoenix was all but gone, and she was a Death Eater's plaything, but all she kept thinking about was that kiss. Maybe she really had lost her mind.

Hermione did her best to ignore it, to put everything out of her mind but the need to escape. Even if the war was well and truly lost, even if there was nothing out there for her but more corpses and more graves, her pity-party was over. She wasn't helpless and she wasn't finished, and she'd make him pay for the things he'd done. She'd make them all pay, and that was a promise.

The first thing she needed was to get that blasted collar off, and to do it before Malfoy returned. The magic in the runes was attuned to him, which meant that he was the only one who could remove it, but necessity was the mother of invention, and Hermione had spend enough time with the twins to know that there was little that couldn't be accomplished with a few ingredients, a little ingenuity and just enough indifference to consequences.

She had no magic and no wand, but sometimes witches didn't need either. The Malfoy gardens were home to more than manicured lawns and colourful flowerbeds, and Hermione hadn't been top of her Herbology and Potions class the whole time she'd been at Hogwarts for nothing. Foxglove, aconite and belladonna were easy to get, and there was enough mandrake root in the kitchens that stealing some wasn't difficult. Hermione couldn't get her hands on any newt eyes or unicorn hair, so she replaced them with rose thorn and poison ivy and a prayer. There was no precedent for what she was about to attempt — not any that she'd ever heard of — so there was no telling whether it would work even if she had access to the entire Hogwarts potion stores. All she could do was try and hope for the best.

She brewed the potion in her room, over the fire, monitoring it closely for changes in colour and consistency, and then poured the resulting concoction into a repurposed scent vial. All she needed now was a drop of Malfoy's blood, or something close enough to it that the potion could make up for the difference.

There was no getting close to Narcissa Malfoy during the day, not with the house-elves fussing about her, so Hermione didn't try. Instead, she waited until late in the evening, when everyone would already have retired for the night. Narcissa's bedroom was in the west wing, close to Malfoy's, and though Hermione had never tried to gain access to it, she would have been amazed if it hadn't been one of the rooms enchanted to keep her out. She still gave the doorknob a try, but was unsurprised when it didn't budge.

Hermione knocked. Sometimes it was a simple as that.

"Come," said a muffled voice from inside the room.

Now that she'd been given permission to enter, the room no longer tried to keep her out, and the doorknob turned easily.

Narcissa Malfoy sat at her vanity, staring vacantly into the distance, an open book abandoned on her lap. The shawl over her shoulders did little to hide the thinness of her frame, and her hair cascaded down her back, giving her an oddly fragile appearance. She looked older like this, frail in a way she hadn't before, even as she spent her days staring at nothing in the rooms below — the beautiful, elegant mistress of Malfoy Manor.

"Andromeda, dear," she said, distractedly, "do you think papa will be cross if I do not go to the assembly? It just tires me so."

"Mrs Malfoy, do you know who I am?"

She looked up then, her gaze meeting Hermione's in the mirror. "You're that girl who was after the Lestrange heir, are you not? The one Bella played a trick on? You mustn't mind her, you know? My sister sometimes forgets herself. She means nothing by it."

Hermione slowly crossed the room, trying not to startle the older woman. "I'm a friend of your son's."

Narcissa frowned. "My son?" She turned in her seat to look properly at Hermione. "You must be mistaken."

"He sent me to check up on you." She knelt in front of Narcissa, looking up at her. "You have been unwell and he wanted me to prepare a potion to make you feel better."

"A potion?" Narcissa lifted a hand to Hermione's face, gently touching her cheek. "You do look so awfully familiar. Have we met?"

"Not until now. As I was saying, your son—"

"Oh." The book slipped from Narcissa's lap as she sat up straighter. "We _have_ met. You're that girl they brought in, the Muggle-born girl. The one Bella—" She made a distressed sound, shifting in her seat, suddenly agitated. "She shouldn't have done that. Oh, she shouldn't have done that. And to a child, too. Merlin, when did everything get so dreadful?"

"That's alright, Mrs Malfoy. It's alright. Everything is fine." It was taking too long and it was getting too loud. If any of the house-elves noticed something was amiss, that would be the end of that. "It happened a very long time ago."

Narcissa shook her head, tears spilling from her eyes. "Horrid, ghastly business." She looked back at Hermione and frowned, her expression turned curious. "Have we met? You look familiar."

Hermione reached for the needle in her pocket. "I'm here to help, Mrs Malfoy. Everything will be fine."

Narcissa touched Hermione's face again, her fingers soft and warm along her jaw. "You're that girl, the one the Dark Lord gifted my son. Are you here to kill me?"

Hermione stilled. Narcissa did not look scared so much as mildly curious, as if they were discussing the weather, as if they were discussing the news of the day.

"No. No, Mrs Malfoy, I'm not." And Hermione couldn't help but feel sorry for this woman who had had everything handed to her — money and status and all the things Malfoy and his kind valued — and who still looked more broken than Hermione felt. "I just need a drop of blood. You won't feel a thing." She pricked Narcissa's finger with a sewing needle and then held it over the vial. The potion turned bright pink the second the blood touched it.

"You look awfully familiar," Narcissa said as Hermione got up. "Have we met?"

"I will let you rest now."

"Oh, I know," Narcissa said after her. "You're that girl Draco brought over for tea. I'm so sorry about your parents, but what a relief it must be to know they're safe."

Hermione paused, her hand on the door handle, and then pushed the door open and walked out. Narcissa wasn't all there, hadn't been for a very long time, and Hermione could either stay and listen to the ravings of a madwoman or she could get out now, while she still had the option. She chose the latter.

She made it back to her room without incident and took the corked vial from her pocket with shaking fingers. It would either work or it wouldn't, and there was no point in putting it off. If it didn't work, there was enough belladonna root in it that it might just kill her. She could only hope.

Without giving herself time to think about it, Hermione drank it all in one go. It would have earned her a lecture from Snape, once upon a time, to test a highly experimental, highly toxic potion on herself. Not that he would have cared about whether or not it might harm her, of course. It was the principle of the thing. She was a long way from Hogwarts, however, and she'd done many a stupider thing in the years since.

She sat back on the bed to keep from falling, suddenly lightheaded — from the mixture or nerves or both. The room was swaying just at the edge of her vision, and Hermione thought, slightly hysterical, that a person could be brave or a person could be smart, but it was very seldom that a person could be both at once. At least if she died, she'd die a Gryffindor, foolish recklessness and all.

A flash of light caught her attention and she stared at herself in the mirror. The room was almost entirely engulfed in darkness, and Hermione could just about make out her reflection in the soft half-light from the open window, but suddenly the runes on the collar lit up like fireflies, one after another.

She hurriedly lifted her hands to the fastening and struggled with it for a few seconds, her fingers made clumsy by impatience and fear, but she was at last able to open the bloody thing. She dropped it on the bed, the relief almost overwhelming. She hadn't expected it to work, not really, and now that it had, she was almost at a loss as to how to proceed.

She wasn't at a loss for long, however. She needed a wand. Before anything else, she needed a wand. The collection of ancient wands in the library was warded off, but Malfoy kept his father's old wand in a simple glass case in his study, and there was something deeply satisfying about a Mudblood making off with Lucius Malfoy's wand.

There were many rooms Hermione could not enter, many rooms that Malfoy had had the foresight to make off limits to her, but his study was not one of them. The arrogance of that had almost cost him once, and it was about to cost him now. It went to show that pride always did go before the fall.

The house was quiet as she rushed downstairs. The portraits had grown accustomed to her comings and goings, and paid her no more attention than if she had been a house-elf.

Lucius Malfoy's old wand was eighteen inches long, elm, with a dragon heartstring, and Hermione could feel it fighting her the moment she wrapped her fingers around it, but the familiar feel of a wand between her fingers still felt right in a way nothing had since the night she'd been captured.

The fastest way to leave would be to take the Floo out of Malfoy's study, but that would also be the fastest way to get caught, and however eager Hermione was to get away, she wasn't that much of an amateur. No, she'd have to walk until she was past the borders of the Malfoy estate, past its wards, and then Disapparate. She'd Apparate in London, where it wouldn't matter even if they did trace her, somewhere where she could easily lose herself in the crowd.

She had just stepped outside the study when a loud crash stopped her in her tracks. Something shattered inside the room she'd just left, and there was a gasp of pain, audible even through the closed door. Hermione had to leave, she absolutely had to leave, because Malfoy was back and he wouldn't be fighting her with a borrowed wand. She had to leave, and she had to leave now, which only made her decision to turn back and open the door to the study all the more baffling.

Malfoy whirled around when she walked in, his wand outstretched in front of him, but he overbalanced and would've fallen if not for the desk. He was deathly pale and there was blood on his neck, visible just above the collar, but that was still less startling than the familiar, red cloak over his shoulders.

"I think I was recognised," he said, eyes unfocused. He lowered his wand to grasp the desk with both hands, his whole body shaking. "I think— They may— They may be coming."

Hermione dashed forward just in time to catch him as he fell, his weight dragging them both down. A small, golden cup fell on the ground, clattering loudly against the tiles, and Hermione did not have to see the engraved badger on it to recognise it.


	5. The Horcrux

"Misty! Ziggy! Someone!" Hermione fumbled with the fastening of the cloak, trying to undo it. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why couldn't he just have told her?

Ziggy popped into existence next to her and immediately shrieked at the sight of her master. Malfoy had passed out, and Hermione was close enough to smell the blood, close enough to see the dark stain on his robes.

"We need to take him upstairs," she said, turning him enough to free the cloak.

"Ziggy will fetch a healer."

"No! Ziggy, do not leave this house. You can't allow any of the other house-elves to leave either."

"Ziggy does not have to follow Hermione Granger's orders."

Hermione turned to the house-elf and grabbed the front of the pillowcase she was wearing. "You _will_ follow my orders if you want to help your master, and you will make sure everyone else does too."

Just then Misty Apparated in the room, followed by Flix and another house-elf whose name Hermione didn't know.

"Oh, no, no, no," Misty said, falling to her knees next to Malfoy. "Our poor, poor mistress. Master Draco, sir, please wake up. Master Draco, you mustn't worry the mistress like this."

"Flix," Hermione said, wrapping Helga Hufflepuff's Cup in the cloak and handing the bundle to the elf. "Hide this where no one will find it. Quick."

Flix looked at Ziggy, who nodded. Only then did he take the cloak and cup, disappearing with a soft pop.

Hermione levitated Malfoy up to his room, followed by an increasingly large number of house-elves who muttered and whimpered and cried none too quietly. Ziggy followed close on her heels, watchful and suspicious, but didn't try to stop her, and even went so far as to lift the wards on Malfoy's room. Maybe the instinct to obey the orders of a wizard or witch — any wizard or witch — was too deeply ingrained for her to do otherwise. Maybe her desire to protect the family's secrets was stronger than her distrust of Hermione.

Lucius's wand was stubborn and wilful, but Hermione still managed to spell Malfoy's robes open. The dismayed cries of the elves were drowned by Narcissa's piercing scream. She rushed past them to fall to her knees by the side of the bed, loud sobs wracking her body.

Deep gashes crossed Malfoy's chest, and his side was turning a deep black where a curse had hit him. He was still unconscious, and his breathing was becoming increasingly laboured, as if he couldn't draw in enough breath.

"Get towels and hot water," Hermione said, trying to think. Dittany. She needed dittany, and lots of it. Dittany, and elfroot potion, and whatever else she could get her hands on. "Ziggy, I need to get into his laboratory."

The house-elf pressed her lips into a thin line, but did not argue. She touched Hermione's robes and suddenly they were out on the landing, outside the door to Malfoy's lab. Ziggy touched a hand to the door and it swung open, revealing a room of moderate proportions, almost entirely taken up by two large workbenches, where three cauldrons were happily bubbling away.

Hermione crossed the room to the cupboards by the far wall, her eyes burning from the vapours from the cauldrons. The first cupboard was full of plants and dried animals parts for potion making, and the second cupboard held an impressive number of jars and flasks and vials, all of them meticulously labelled. There were antidotes and sleeping draughts, and Wolfsbane Potion, and Draught of Living Death, and Polyjuice Potion, and Bruise-Healing Paste, and any number of things that would have taken time and patience and a lot of hard-to-find ingredients to create. There was even a very small vial of Felix Felicis.

She grabbed a flask of Blood-Replenishing Potion, a Calming Draught and all the Essence of Dittany she could find. Hermione was no healer, but the war had taught her this much: a lot could be accomplished if she just had enough dittany.

Narcissa was still sobbing when Hermione made it back to the bedroom, and Misty and another house-elf were patting her hair and trying to comfort her, while all the others stood around them, most of them openly crying.

"Try to get her to take this," Hermione said, giving Ziggy the calming draught. She ought to have brought a sleeping draught, really. The last thing she needed was Narcissa getting in the way.

Hermione had just uncorked one of the flasks of dittany when all the house-elves lifted their heads and looked towards the window, and even Narcissa went silent, as if she'd just heard something.

"What is it?" Hermione asked.

It was Misty who said, "Wizards. Past the wards. Someone's coming."

Narcissa whimpered, the sob that escaped her lips turning into a wail.

 _I think I was recognised._ That's what Malfoy had said; it had been the first thing he'd said. How sure were they?

"Ziggy, come here. Pour these over his wounds," she said, pointing at the three dittany bottles, "and try to make him drink this."

"What will Hermione Granger do?"

"Something reckless." Malfoy was one of Voldemort's top lieutenants. They wouldn't accuse him without being sure, and they couldn't be sure. Not if he'd managed to get away with the Horcrux. "Misty, keep Narcissa here, and keep her quiet." Everyone flinched when the loud knocker echoed throughout the house. "Flix, stall them. It's the middle of the night; the master and the mistress are asleep." Flix Disapparated, followed by two other house-elves.

Hermione leaned over Malfoy and pulled one single hair, and then rushed to the laboratory and grabbed a flask of Polyjuice Potion. The potion fizzled when she dropped the hair in, and immediately turned silver. Hermione drank the whole thing. She couldn't be sure how long she needed, and the last thing she wanted was to turn back to herself too soon.

She almost lost her balance when her bones shifted and changed, her skin gone too tight, the pressure in her skull almost unbearable. It lasted no more than a few moments and then it was over, leaving Hermione shaken and nauseous and unsteady. Her body felt wrong — too large, too tall, occupying space it did not usually. Merlin, but she hated being Polyjuiced.

"The Master's wand." It was Ziggy, standing by her side.

Hermione took Malfoy's wand — hawthorn, ten inches, unicorn hair — and drew an arc with it, bright sparks shooting from the tip. It was a better match than Lucius's had been. She quickly transfigurated her robes.

"Go back to Malfoy," she told Ziggy. "Keep him alive. Keep Narcissa quiet."

At this point, Narcissa was the least of her problems. Polyjuice would only do so much.

Hermione marched down the stairs, hyper-aware of her body movements, knowing that the harder she tried to control the way her body moved, the less natural it would look, but unable to stop herself.

"What is the meaning of this?" Her heart was hammering in her chest, and Hermione felt like she might throw up at any moment, but it wasn't her first time impersonating someone, it wasn't even her first time impersonating a Death Eater, and knowing that failure meant certain death — or worse — was powerful motivation to do well.

"Malfoy?" Avery looked up, surprised, his fingers still clutched around Flix's throat. The elf kicked uselessly at nothing, gasping for air.

"Is there a reason for you to be in my house, at this hour, assaulting my servants?" Another of the house-elves in the hall — Pebble, or Dotty, or Sand — sobbed miserably, but Hermione did not look to see. She kept her gaze on Avery. Malfoy wouldn't have cared about the house-elf, not particularly, not beyond the fact that he owned it, and it was rude to touch other people's things without permission.

"I'm surprised to see you looking so… healthy." Barty Crouch moved like a snake ready to strike, the same restrained strength, the same predatory intensity.

Hermione came to a halt in front of him, hands in her pockets, trying to project an air of relaxed nonchalance, even though every instinct in her body was screaming at her to draw her wand. There were five of them: Avery, Crouch, Rodolphus Lestrange and the Carrow siblings. The only way this could've been worse was if Voldemort himself had been with them.

"You've dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night because you're concerned about my health? I'm touched."

Avery dropped Flix, who fell to his hands and knees, forehead to the floor, sobbing, and apologising, and detailing all the many ways he might — no, would! — punish himself for failing to properly please his master's guests. Hermione gave him a look of distaste and ordered him to take his incessant blubbering and go. To the other house-elves, she added, "We'll take drinks in the drawing room."

She wanted the Death Eaters gone, she wanted them out of here, but it would not do to look too eager.

"Follow me," she said with the deep, put-upon sigh of one who'd reconciled himself to the presence of unexpected, unwanted and unwelcome guests.

The watchful gaze of the portraits followed them as they walked past opulent rooms and lavish corridors into the drawing room. Polyjuice Potion would not fool them — the manor knew its own — but they said nothing, watching them walk by in somber silence.

"I'm still waiting for an explanation." Hermione kept her tone light, friendly even, just the hint of a threat under the pleasantness. She sat down on one of the sofas, an arm slung carelessly over the back, and took the drink that immediately appeared on the small table next to her.

"Hufflepuff's Cup was stolen," Alecto Carrow said, still standing. They were all still standing.

Hermione stopped the movement of the glass and stared at the witch for a second, before turning her gaze on Rodolphus. "You've lost the Cup?" Bellatrix's fury had been like a storm — loud, roaring and thundering. Malfoy's was like the sea, deep and still, home to horrors all the more terrifying because they were out of sight. Hermione ought to know.

Rodolphus flinched as if he'd been struck. "I've lost nothing. You've taken it. It was you. You were seen. You were—"

Hermione stood up and Rodolphus took an instinctive step back.

"Where is Rabastan?" she asked, taking one step towards Rodolphus, and then another, until they were face to face.

"He— That is— He's out looking for it. He's— He must be—"

She looked to Avery, who supplied, "We don't know. He's vanished."

So either Malfoy had killed him or Rabastan knew exactly how much his life was worth now that that he'd lost one of Voldemort's most prized possessions. Few Death Eaters knew about the Horcruxes, even those in Voldemort's inner circle, but they knew enough to know one didn't disappoint He Who Must Not Be Named and live to tell the tale.

"Bellatrix kept that cup safe for years," Hermione said, her voice — Malfoy's voice — now shaking with barely-contained rage. "And all it took was a few weeks in the care of the Lestrange brothers for it to be gone?"

Rodolphus seemed to shrink on himself before shouting back, his face white with fury. "It was you! You were seen!"

"Have a care, Rodolphus, that I don't forget you're more useful alive than dead." She turned to Avery. "Find Rabastan. Let him explain himself to the Dark Lord."

Avery nodded, looking grave, but Barty Crouch looked less than convinced.

"You _were_ seen at the bank, Malfoy. I hit you with a curse myself."

"Don't be daft, Crouch." If he had been sure, she'd be dead by now. "Do I look to you like I've been cursed? Search the house, if you like. And then you can explain to the Dark Lord why on top of everything else, you wasted your time harassing one of his most loyal servants instead of trying to get it back."

Amycus and Alecto were now looking distinctly uncomfortable, and even Rodolphus looked less than certain, but Crouch simply stared at Hermione, his expression a blank mask. And then, as if satisfied, he nodded, and turned away.

"We'll send word when we have it," he said, almost at the door. The Carrows and Rodolphus followed after him, but Avery hung back long enough to say, in a low voice, "My apologies for this, Malfoy. It won't happen again."

"See that it doesn't. And Avery," she added when he turned to leave, "keep an eye on Rodolphus."

It might not keep them off Malfoy's scent for long, but with some luck it might just be long enough.

* * *

Hermione dabbed Malfoy's forehead with a wet cloth and he stirred, but did not wake. The master bedroom was silent and empty, except for the both of them. Misty had managed to coax Narcissa into returning to her bedroom and taking a sleeping draught, and Ziggy had marshalled all the other house-elves away. Malfoy's chest rose and fell rhythmically, his breathing deep and steady. The potions had done as much as they could do, and there was nothing to do now but wait.

The Order of the Phoenix had many unlikely people in many unlikely places, and Malfoy wasn't the only Death Eater they had ever recruited — Snape had spied for the Order for years — but it still surprised her, though maybe it shouldn't have. He was the perfect mole, after all. Who would ever suspect someone like him? Someone who'd done the things he had?

She flinched when the Polyjuice potion faded, and gritted her teeth as her body changed and shifted back into itself.

When she opened her eyes, Malfoy was looking up at her.


	6. The Mole

**II. Draco**

"No. You're not listening. I want out. I want my mother out."

The kitchen at Number 12 Grimmauld Place was large and spacious, and though it might once have been considered impressive, there was little that was impressive about it now. Dirt caked the windows, keeping out the light; the chairs and tables were old and wobbly, and most of the cupboards did not close properly. Mold was beginning to show in the corners of the ceiling, and the very air smelled damp. Despite the generous proportions, there were enough people in it now to make it feel cramped and claustrophobic.

"Mr Malfoy," Dumbledore said in that insufferably patient tone that always made Draco wish he'd done a better job of it on top of the Astronomy Tower, "I understand your reservations, but the Order cannot afford to pull you out now and lose the only source of information we have in the Dark Lord's inner circle."

"I'm not asking for permission." Wasn't he? It sometimes felt like Dumbledore kept him on a tighter leash than the Dark Lord ever had. "And besides, I don't have the sort of access you want. If you wanted that sort of intel, you should've tried harder to keep Snape alive." Hermione placed a calming hand on his arm, but Draco shook her off. "I'm done, Professor. Find yourself another spy."

"Professor Snape's death was a great loss," Dumbledore allowed, accepting a cup of tea from Mrs Weasley, "but it's all the more reason why we need you to stay where you are. You're right, Mr Malfoy, you don't have the sort of access we need, but that is something that can be worked on."

Malfoy scoffed. "No, thank you. I value my life, even if you don't. It's a miracle they haven't caught me yet, and unlike you and Professor Snape, I know when to cut my losses."

"The boy isn't wrong, Albus," Moody said, leaning over Ginny Weasley to grab a scone from the table. "Too many people know about this. Merlin, there's ten of us in this room alone. It's no way to run covert ops, let me tell you."

"I trust everyone at this table, Alastor."

"And the Potters trusted Peter Pettigrew." At the explosion of protests from everyone there, Moody held out his hands. "Oh, settle down, will you? I'm not saying anyone's a traitor. It doesn't take a traitor for this thing to blow up in our faces, or more to the point, in Malfoy's face. All it takes is for them to capture someone who knows something, and too many people here know way too many things they shouldn't. A few hours being used as a pincushion by Bellatrix Lestrange and any one of you will spill everything you know, and many things you don't, and say thank you at the end."

"Yes, thank you, Alastor, that's quite enough."

"You know I'm right, Minerva, and don't pretend you don't. The noose is tightening around all our necks, make no mistake. We can't even Apparate anymore without bringing the Ministry down on us. It's only a matter of time before they get their hands on someone who knows one secret too many, and that's the end of that."

"Oh, we have a solution for the Apparition thing, don't we, George?"

"Right you are, Fred. You lot will love it. It's both a solution and a fashion statement."

"And kind of a workout routine, really."

"It will keep you fit _and_ stylish."

The discussion went on for another three hours, by the end of which Draco was about ready to sell the whole lot of them to the Death Eaters, starting and ending with Dumbledore. Draco wasn't one of them, had never been one of them, and could not even begin to explain what had possessed him to turn informant for the Order of the Phoenix, except that being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea was powerful motivation to learn to swim. For all the good it had done him. It was beginning to look more and more likely that he'd drown regardless.

"He doesn't mean to use people, you know?" It was some time later when Potter came to stand by his side, staring pensively at the Black Family Tapestry. Voices could be heard elsewhere in the house, but the two of them were the only people in the drawing room.

"Doesn't he?" Whether or not Dumbledore meant it, he certainly excelled at it.

Harry touched the place in the tapestry where Sirius Black had once been.

"He's so focused on the big picture," he said after a moment, "that he sometimes forgets we're human beings, not chess pieces." And if Harry Potter was criticising Albus Dumbledore, maybe the world really was coming to an end. "It's your choice, Malfoy. If you want out, we'll get you out. Whatever he says to the contrary."

Before Draco could reply, Ron Weasley appeared at the door to warn Harry that Percy had spilt the beans on the whole going off to hunt Horcruxes thing, and their mum was in a right state, so unless he wanted to be on the receiving end of a binding hex and kept safely tied to a chair till the war was over, he'd better come and calm her down.

"I swear, she likes Harry better than she likes me, and I'm her son."

Their voices receded in the distance, but Draco stayed where he was. His mother was on that tapestry too, close to Bellatrix, close to where Sirius had once been, but the portrait Draco kept staring at, the one that kept drawing his attention, was Regulus Black's. Now _there_ was a cautionary tale.

Familiar arms wrapped themselves around his waist and Hermione pressed against his back. He covered her hands with his, leaning back against her.

"I was wondering where you'd gone," he said.

"Let's go up." She pressed a kiss to his shoulder before letting go, and Draco followed her up the rickety stairs, past faded portraits and peeling wallpaper. 12 Grimmauld Place had once been the home of one of the oldest, most powerful wizarding families in Britain — older even than the Malfoys, wealthier too — and yet, despite Bellatrix, despite all the other powerful families made all the more powerful by the sons and daughters that served the Dark Lord earnestly, loyally, faithfully, all Draco could see was the corruption and the decay and the rot. _Toujours Pur_ indeed. What a joke.

The bedroom Hermione shared with Ginny Weasley was a small, cramped garret with a slanted roof, that could barely fit the two beds and two nightstands that were the only furniture.

He collapsed on Hermione's bed, ignoring her tutting at the ominous creaking of the frame. It wasn't a comfortable position — half sitting, half lying across it, his feet still firmly on the ground and his shoulders propped up against the wall, but he was on a mostly horizontal position and that had to be an improvement on his day up to this point. Draco hated this house, he hated his life, he hated everything in the whole wide world except possibly this bed, in this room, at this moment. The mattress dipped as Hermione climbed next to him, sitting down with her back against the wall.

"Out with it, then," he said looking up at her.

"Out with what?"

"Whatever big speech lies in my future about war and sacrifices and the greater good."

Hermione rolled her eyes, looking away. "I'd have thought you'd have had enough of those for one day."

"Oh, I have. But I know how you love a big, rousing speech."

"I'll try hard to control myself," she said, deadpan.

He chuckled, kissing her arm. "I appreciate the effort." They sat in companionable silence for several minutes. Somewhere on the floor below, Molly Weasley was yelling at the twins to stop monkeying around and to move their boxes of tricks out of the parlour before someone lost a limb.

Hermione lifted a hand to his head, running her fingers through his hair. "I know it's dangerous," she said.

"But?" Because he knew there was a 'but' coming, however little he wanted to hear it.

"But Evelyn Vane was arrested yesterday for Muggle sympathies because someone saw him with a copy of _The London Times_."

Draco remembered Vane vaguely from their time at Hogwarts. He was older than them by a few years. A Ravenclaw.

"Three more people went missing in as many days," Hermione continued. "Ordinary people, going about their normal, ordinary lives." She looked down at him, meeting his gaze. "What do you think that says about the life expectancy of the rest of us?"

"I think your motivational skills need work."

"I'm serious."

"I know."

"Everything we're doing is dangerous." She sank down on the bed, curling up against his side, an arm around his chest. "Any of us could die tomorrow. We might as well do what we can, while we can."

He tightened his arm around her and tipped his head back, looking up at the ceiling, trying to put his thoughts into words. "It's not just that it's dangerous," he said at last, though it was also that it was dangerous. He wasn't a lunatic. "Do you understand what I'd have to do to get the sort of access Dumbledore wants? The things I'd have to do?"

And Merlin knew his hands weren't exactly clean — after almost a year of war, anyone who could claim a clear conscience was either lying, a fool, or had never had a conscience to begin with — but everything he'd done so far, up to and including what had happened atop the Astronomy Tower, all of it would look like child's play compared to what he'd have to do to prove himself to He Who Must Not Be Named, to say nothing of what he'd have to do to prove himself to the likes of Barty Crouch or Walden Macnair; what he'd have to do to prove himself to his aunt Bella. He wasn't sure he had the stomach for it. He wasn't sure he wanted to be the sort of person who _had_ the stomach for it.

Hermione tilted her head up to look at him. "I know," she said only, and he wondered if she did, if she realised. He hoped not. He hoped she never would have to.

* * *

Torches lit up along the deserted corridor as they walked by. Every step jolted his protesting ribs, but Draco gritted his teeth and ignored the pain like he ignored everything else — the pressure in his head, the heaviness in his limbs, the ache in his chest that had nothing to do with his bruised ribs. They had no time to waste.

"What is this place?" Hermione asked, close behind him.

"The manor's vaults." The wards tingled against his skin, old and powerful. The manor knew its own.

Hermione had ordered Flix to hide the Horcrux where no one would find it, and the elf had taken it to the safest place he knew of. The vaults under Malfoy Manor were old — centuries older than the house above them — and were hidden under more layers of secrecy and security than any other place in Britain, except possibly Hogwarts. Only a Malfoy could open the passage that led to them, and if anyone but a Malfoy tried to remove any of the objects kept inside, they'd die screaming.

The Malfoy family house-elves were able to Apparate in and out of the vaults, but even their magic would not allow them to take anything. Flix had been able to hide the Horcrux, but now that Lucius was dead, Draco was the only person who could retrieve it.

"You knew about Colin," Hermione said, almost like an accusation, almost like a challenge. "That's why I was there. You wanted to make sure Bellatrix would show."

The corridor opened into a wide room that reminded Draco of the Room of Hidden Things. Shelves lined the walls, floor to ceiling, all of them weighed down by books and trinkets and harmless-looking knickknacks — most of them valuable or rare, all of them ten different kinds of illegal, none of them harmless.

Two doors led away from the room. Draco turned left without even having to think.

"You were very convenient bait," he said, starting down narrow steps.

"Well, aren't I lucky?"

Draco ignored the jibe, tried hard to ignore her too. Bellatrix had known herself a target, had known better than to show up in such a public place. Hermione _had_ been convenient bait, and Draco could only be grateful that his aunt's obsession with 'Potter's pet Mudblood' had only increased when the Dark Lord had seen fit to gift Hermione to him instead of to her.

"Who knows?" Hermione asked.

"About what?" The vaults were as deep as the manor was high, and there were two more floors below them, but Draco knew they were getting close. He could feel it in his bones.

"About you. That you're working for the Order."

Too many people, once upon a time. Moody hadn't been wrong when he'd said it was a recipe for disaster, and Hermione had readily agreed with him. She'd been the one to suggest memory spells could be used to limit the amount of people who could give away his secret.

"Dumbledore does," he said, a bitter taste in his mouth. "And now you."

The sound of her steps stopped abruptly and then resumed, the heels clacking loudly against the stone floor as she hurried to catch up with him.

"Dumbledore is alive?"

"Last I checked." One more secret hidden away behind enough corpses and enough memory spells.

Draco stopped on the landing, hesitating for a second before turning right, past a stone gargoyle that turned loudly on its pedestal to stare after them.

"Who else?" Hermione asked, voice pitched just a little too high. "Who else is alive?"

"We're getting close."

"Malfoy." She grabbed his sleeve and he stopped short, looking back at her. "Who else is alive?" she repeated, the hope in her expression like a dagger to the heart.

He hated her for asking, and himself for turning away before saying, "No one. No one else." Not Potter, not Weasley, not anyone else. There were no more miracles. The dead were dead, and the living were quickly running out of options.

Though that might be about to change.

"Here," he said, crossing the room. There were crates all around, and piles upon piles of gold and gemstones, like a dragon's hoard. A small, red bundle had been left under a large, golden throne. Not content with hiding it there, Flix had further disguised its presence by placing an open book over it, as if hiding something already protected by layers and layers of wards under a copy of _Mephistopheles's Compendium of Curses_ were a perfectly rational thing to do.

Hermione came to a stop next to him, close enough to touch. "How do we destroy it?" she asked.

He reached inside his pocket for the Basilisk fang and handed it to her wordlessly.


	7. The Plan

Draco had often thought of what would happen when the war ended, playing it out in his mind on days when he wanted nothing more than to set himself on fire (to get rid of the blasted thing on his left arm; to get rid of the memory of all the terrible, unforgivable things he'd done).

He'd take his mother somewhere quiet and peaceful, where she could rest and recover. Somewhere where she wouldn't be surrounded by the constant reminders of everything that had happened, of everything she'd lost.

He'd get a job doing something perfectly ordinary. Maybe he'd be a shopkeeper. His father would've murdered him for even mentioning something so absurd as a Malfoy becoming a shopkeeper, but Draco thought he might like it — a quiet, ordinary, unremarkable life. He could sell books, or cauldrons, or wands. Maybe he'd become an apothecary.

He'd find Hermione and tell her everything. He'd tell her all the things he'd done, and he'd tell her why; he'd tell her about Dumbledore, and about the memory spells that had kept them safe, that had kept all of the Order's other inconvenient secrets safe.

He'd tell her about the promises they'd made to one another, the two of them, about the stolen moments in the draughty, old attic room at Number 12, about that last night before everything changed. He'd tell her everything, and she'd know, and everything would be as before, and they'd be happy.

Maybe she'd like to be an apothecary's wife. Maybe she'd want to open a bookshop and they could have their shops side by side, and pop in for a visit or for a cuppa when things weren't busy. Maybe they could have a little flat above the shops. He'd like that.

It was a fantasy, of course. It was a beautiful delusion that had kept him sane and alive, but that didn't — had never — had a hope in hell of coming true.

His mother would never recover, things between him and Hermione could never again be as they had once been, and Death Eaters did not become apothecaries.

He did tell Hermione everything, though. Everything she needed to know, at any rate. He told her about Dumbledore and the Order and his own role in the war. He told her everything that was pertinent, and left out everything else. There was no point. All the things that had happened between them had been erased as thoroughly as if they'd never happened, and neither of them was the person they'd been back then. Hermione remembered none of it, and she never would again.

She remembered plenty of other things, though, things he would've sold his very soul to forget. She remembered him catching her outside Tabitha Jorkins's home, and the questions he'd asked her deep in the Ministry dungeons, and all the things he'd done — all the horrible, painful, terrible things he'd done — to tear the answers out of her. She remembered her friends burning to death in Nevin Square.

They might be allies again, but they were not friends, and they would never again be anything more.

"We have to act now," she said for the tenth time as he walked out of his mother's room.

"Granger—"

"There's only the diadem and that vile snake left. If we can destroy them—"

He stopped short and turned to her. "Getting into Gringotts was a walk in the park compared to getting into Hogwarts. And even that would be easier than taking out Nagini. She doesn't leave his side. Not ever. So kindly leave me alone."

He stalked away, but that little tirade had only earned him five seconds of peace.

"If I could go to Number 12, if I could see what state the Order's forces are in, we could—"

Draco stopped halfway down the stairs, trying to remind himself that he didn't really want to strangle her. "You are not leaving this house." Forget the fact that it would give _him_ away as sure as if he tattooed traitor on his forehead. He couldn't protect her out there.

"I could be useful; I could be doing things. What am I supposed to do locked in here?"

"I neither know, nor care," he said, making for his study. "Read a book. Try the patience of my house-elves some more. I really couldn't care less. I'm going out."

"Malfoy, don't you dare leave me here. I swear—"

But by the time she finished the sentence he was already on the other end of the Floo connection to the Ministry.

It had been relatively easy until now for him to ignore how absurdly angry he was at her, but he _was_ angry. He'd been angry for the better part of three years. The decision to carry on spying for the Order had been his and his alone, and he'd made it for a lot of complex, complicated reasons, only some of which had to do with the fact that he'd have cut off his right arm at a word from her. He didn't get to be angry about it now.

And yet he was.

He was angry at her for making him want to stay rather than cut and run, and he was angry at her for making sure no one — not even herself — was in a position to give him away if captured, and he was furious at her for getting herself caught like a bloody amateur.

Mostly he was mad at her because he alone had had to live with all the things she'd chosen to forget, and if he dwelled too much on it, if he thought too much about it, he'd hate her till his dying day.

* * *

Draco's day had started off poorly, and several hours spent in Albus Dumbledore's company had done nothing to improve it. By the end of it, Draco was about ready to tell Voldemort everything, if only because if the Dark Lord killed him, he'd no longer have to put up with any of this nonsense.

The problem with Dumbledore was — had always been — that the old headmaster was the worst sort of Gryffindor. He was rash and reckless, and could never understand why everyone else was not as eager as he was to lay down his life in the service of a higher cause.

Much like Hermione, Dumbledore's first reaction upon learning that Hufflepuff's Cup had been destroyed had been to declare that now was the time to act. Unfortunately for Draco, Dumbledore was not — unlike Hermione — someone he could keep safely locked away like a princess in a tower. (Draco was more familiar with the desire to do just that than he'd ever expected or hoped to be. He had been Dumbledore's Secret Keeper for years; he never thought he'd actually come to like the old fart.)

In a flash of inspiration that had never led to anything good as far as Draco was concerned, Dumbledore had immediately drawn up an ambitious, mad, desperate plan that involved overthrowing the Ministry, retaking Hogwarts and taking out Lord Voldemort all at the same time. And as if that weren't enough, he meant to accomplish this using nothing more than the exhausted, broken, pathetic leftovers of an army that had never been worthy of the name even back when it had had ten times the amount of people it currently did.

Potter would've loved it.

Draco had argued and threatened and yelled, but there was no dissuading Albus Dumbledore once he made up his mind to do something foolishly heroic, not even when his heroism was to be bought and paid for — as it so often was — with the blood of others. Maybe it was the callousness in that that appealed to Draco, the ruthless Slytherin streak amid all that Gryffindor earnestness. For all his moral high-ground and nobility of purpose, Dumbledore could be curiously cold-blooded.

Dumbledore would have to sell the plan to McGonagall, of course — and she might just kill him for letting her think he was dead all this time — but if anyone could be convinced to go along with a daring, glorious, heroic last stand that may well end in her death, and everyone else's besides, she could.

Draco often thought the war might have played out very differently if fewer of the people in charge had been former Gryffindors. Might have helped the mortality rate a little, if nothing else.

He left Dumbledore to it. Draco was still the Order's best kept secret, after all, and besides, he didn't want to see Dumbledore and McGonagall's reunion, didn't want to witness the heartfelt joy and affection and relief. He had enough things weighing him down.

It was dark outside by the time he made it back to the manor, and lamps had been lit in his study. Hermione was asleep on the sofa in the corner. He wasn't even surprised. She would've wanted to be there when he returned, the better to keep harassing him about leaving her there, no doubt.

She whimpered in her sleep, something like a sob escaping her lips, and Draco leaned over her, placing a hand on her arm.

"Hermione, wake up."

She startled awake, her eyes wide with terror, and she instinctively flinched away from him. He let go of her and flicked his wand, causing all the lamps around the room to shine brighter.

"Don't you have a bed?" he asked, and she immediately hid her fear behind a well-practiced glare, as he knew she would.

"You need to stop avoiding me." Her voice was steady, even though her hands were shaking.

"I wasn't aware that I was."

"Bullshit. You were before, too, I just hadn't realised it." She stood up and he turned to the tray in the corner and poured himself a shot of Firewhisky, just for something to do. "I'm either your prisoner or I'm not, and you need to decide which. If the latter, you need to stop keeping me in the dark and let me help, and if the former, you better hope the wards around this place are really good, because if not, next time you take off, I won't be here when you come back."

He tossed back the drink, relishing the slight burn of the Firewhisky. "That's a lot of talk from someone without so much as a wand to her name." He poured himself another one.

"You think I couldn't do it?"

Oh, he knew she could. Given enough time to puzzle it out, she could and she would. He'd found that dogged obstinacy charming, once upon a time.

"Don't get your knickers in a twist, Granger," he said before tossing back the second shot of Firewhisky. "Dumbledore has as much of a martyr complex as you do. You'll get ample opportunity to get yourself killed."

"Meaning what? Malfoy," she called after him when he walked past her. "Draco." She grabbed his sleeve and he whirled around, jerking it free.

"You need to back the fuck off, because I'm about to lose what little patience I have left."

She blanched, but held her ground. "I'm not afraid of you."

He scoffed at that, and smirked a little wider when she mirrored his step forward with a step backwards. "Yeah," he said, hearing the bitterness in his own voice. "I can tell."

This time when he turned to leave, she did not try to stop him.

* * *

Early next morning, someone knocked on the door. Draco heard it, but did not get up from where he was, sitting at his desk. Malfoys did not answer their own door. That's what they had house-elves for. When whoever was outside knocked again a few seconds later, Draco frowned and got to his feet. He made it to the entrance hall just in time to see Hermione open the door, and immediately realised why none of the house-elves had done it. Outside stood a Muggle boy, no more than ten or so. Behind him, on the ground, was some sort of Muggle contraption with wheels.

"I'm looking for a Mr Malfoy."

"I'm Mr Malfoy," Draco said, opening the door wider and standing next to Hermione. He could not remember the last time a Muggle had walked up to the house. He doubted it had ever happened.

"Right. Mrs Dalloway said to say the party is tonight, and to bring everyone round, 'cause it's gonna be a real big one. She said the bus goes at eleven sharp, and not to be any later than midnight, or you'll miss the fireworks." He pulled a small, rectangular object out of his pocket and handed it to Hermione. "Said to give this to you, miss."

"Is that all?" Draco asked with all the equanimity of one used to being addressed by strange Muggle boys carrying cryptic messages and mysterious Muggle items.

"Yes, sir," he said, but did not move, staring up at Draco expectantly.

Draco stared back. Perhaps there was some sort of Muggle social protocol that escaped him. Hermione sighed next to him.

"Hold on a second," she said to the boy. She walked to the side table in the corner, fishing Draco's wand out of his back pocket in passing. After looking around her, she pulled a tendril out of the miniature Devil's Snare on the table, and then tapped it with the wand, transfigurating it into a Muggle banknote.

"Thank you, miss," the boy said when she handed him the money, his smile so bright it could probably be seen from two counties over.

"Off with you, then," Draco said, followed by, "Hand it over," to Hermione, once the door was safely closed. She rolled her eyes, but gave him his wand back.

"Care to share what that was about?"

"Mrs Dalloway is having a party," he said, heading for his study. "Misty, Ziggy, Flix." The three house-elves immediately materialised next to him. "Pack up my mother's things. Send house-elves ahead to the house in France. Close down the manor. No one gets past the wards in or out after tonight."

"Yes, master," they said as one, disappearing again with a soft pop.

"Mrs Dalloway is a character in a Virginia Woolf novel." She placed her palm over the top of the Firewhisky bottle when he reached for it. "Out with it, Malfoy."

He glared at her, but Hermione did not budge. And what did it matter, anyway? He was well aware that at this point he was being evasive out of nothing but spite and pig-headed stubbornness.

"Fine. Now kindly get your hands off my alcohol."

"So long as you're sharing."

He wasn't sure she meant the plan or the Firewhisky, but he poured her a drink anyway. No one should be sober for this.

Dumbledore's plan was the sort of reckless gamble that only a Gryffindor brain high on its own cleverness could come up with. There wasn't much left of the Order's forces, and what little there was, he chose to split, because why wouldn't he?

Moody would gather what few Aurors were left — those still free and loyal and just enough out of their bloody minds to agree to it — and together they'd storm the Ministry and attempt to overthrow the wizarding government. So far, so likely to get them all butchered.

At the same time, the bulk of the Order's so-called army would be waiting just outside the wards that protected Hogwarts for a small group of intrepid daredevils to sneak into the castle. This elite task force on which so much of Dumbledore's plan hinged included the likes of George-I've-Been-Trying-Really-Hard-To-Get-Myself-Killed-For-The-Better-Part-Of-Two-Years-Weasley, Luna-Oh-Look-A-Nargle-Lovegood, Albus-I-Haven't-Been-Able-To-Take-Two-Steps-Since-I-Took-A-Dive-From-The-Astronomy-Tower-Dumbledore, and the poor excuses for Auror Programme rejects that were Padma Patil, Justin Finch-Fletchley and Astoria Greengrass (who, as a Slytherin, really ought to have known better).

After they managed to get into the castle (and Merlin only knew how they meant to accomplish that; the Carrows had destroyed all the secret passages into the school), they would locate the missing Horcrux, but rather than destroy it — that would've been far too simple — they would cause enough of a commotion for Voldemort to know they were there and to come running to protect the blasted thing.

Dumbledore meant to lower the castle's wards long enough for the Order's forces to cross into the grounds, and then he meant to turn the school's defences against the Death Eaters, never mind the fact that Hogwarts was bound to the current headmistress, and that Alecto was unlikely to just let him take over out of the kindness of her heart.

"It could work," Hermione said, a statement somehow undermined by her pouring herself yet another glass of Firewhisky.

"Could it?"

She shrugged. "We'll have He Who Must Not Be Named, the snake and the diadem all in one place. His forces will be split between the school and the Ministry, and if Dumbledore can wrestle the school's power away from Carrow, it could work." She took a sip and made a face. "And anyway," she said, sitting back down on the chair across from him, and propping up her feet on the corner of his chair, "the way we're losing people, soon enough there won't be anyone left. We do this now, or not at all."

Desperation. Now there was a good reason to do something. "To being backed into a corner," he said, holding out his glass towards her.

She stared at it for a moment and then touched her glass to his. "To being backed into a corner."

They drank in silence for a few moments. Hermione glanced at the desk, where the black rectangle the Muggle boy had given her lay, and reached for it.

"So sometime between eleven and midnight, this should activate."

"What is it?"

"A Portkey," she said as if it were self-evident.

Draco rolled his eyes. "Yes, thank you. I meant—"

"I know what you meant." She smiled at him then, and something twisted painfully inside of him. "It's a cassette. It's for playing music. Spice Girls' Spiceworld." He had no idea what that meant. "It will probably land us with the rest of the main group."

"It will land you with the rest of the main group."

She lifted an eyebrow at him. "Where will you be?"

"Herding Death Eaters." He emptied his glass. "I'll be making sure the Dark Lord walks into Dumbledore's clever little trap." That and he needed to find out exactly where Ravenclaw's Diadem was. Dumbledore had an informant inside the castle looking for it, but he hadn't found it yet, and Draco wasn't holding his breath.

Hermione stared at him as if he were out of his mind. "Crouch was on to you. If you go back there—"

"Crouch is paranoid; he wouldn't trust his own shadow. No one will take him seriously."

"You hope."

"I know," he said, trying and failing to keep the irritation off his voice. They'd had a very different conversation, once upon a time. "And if I'm wrong, what does it matter? I'll get myself killed one hour earlier rather than one hour later. Do you really care?"

He stared at her as if daring her to disagree, but Hermione merely stared back, looking thoughtful.

"Yes," she finally said. "Merlin knows why, but I do."

It was possibly the most honest thing she could have said, and Draco still found it more depressing than the alternative.

He placed his empty glass on the desk, getting up. "Better get some rest for tonight," he said. No more drinking. No more talking. No good had ever come of either. "I have stuff to take care of."

It was getting late, after all, and the end of the world wasn't going to organise itself.

"Draco," Hermione said, and he paused at the door, looking back at her. The fire lit her profile in just the right way, and for a split second it could have been any of dozens of days they'd spent waiting for orders at Grimmauld Place. "What else did I forget?" she asked, and the illusion was gone. "I knew you were in the Order, once. What else did the memory spell make me forget?"

He knew what she was asking, but he wasn't drunk enough to give her a real answer. Not nearly, not yet. Not by a long shot. He doubted he ever would be.

"The wands in the library," he said instead, "find one you can use."

And with that he turned and left.


	8. The Battle of Hogwarts

**III. Hermione**

The wand Hermione chose — the wand that chose her — had once belonged to Imogen Adelaide Malfoy, a socialite turned academic, who'd risen through the Ministry ranks to become the first female head of the Department of Mysteries. It was a wand that had once produced elegant, delicate magic. There was nothing delicate about the use it was being put to now.

"Watch it, Granger," Zacharias Smith yelled after narrowly avoiding being flattened by the stone archway she'd hit with a crushing spell right above his head. Seeing as the thing had collapsed on top of the half-giant about to squash him, Hermione couldn't bring herself to feel too bad about it.

"Keep pushing forward," McGonagall shouted, barely managing to make herself heard over the commotion. The castle's courtyard had exploded into chaos the moment they'd reached it. Hexes and curses flew through the air, hitting flesh and stone walls, raining down masonry on trolls and werewolves and wizards alike.

There were too many nightmare monsters protecting the school, too many large, powerful creatures with sharp teeth and heavy fists, and skin thick enough to withstand the worst of the spells the Order could throw at them. Hermione was beginning to think they would never make it past the courtyard — or out of it, come to that — when a stone gargoyle crushed the skull of a werewolf as if it were cracking a nut.

All the horrors Voldemort had surrounded the school with — werewolves, trolls, giants, Acromantulas — they were all large, powerful creatures, but Hogwarts was larger and older and more powerful, and they were no longer welcome.

"Get inside," Madam Pince shouted before hitting a werewolf with a curse square in the face.

If outside there was mayhem, inside was no better. Voldemort had yet to grace them with his presence, but over the years he'd replaced all the teachers with his own people, and there were plenty of Death Eaters in the castle even without reinforcements.

Spells bounced off walls in the entrance hall as Justin Finch-Fletchley and a number of kids tried to hold their ground against Virgil Flint, Horace Bulstrode, Ethel Blackwood and half a dozen Acromantulas — smaller than the ones outside but still roughly the size of very large dogs, and venomous to boot.

"Johnson, secure the dungeons," McGonagall said, and Angelina broke away from the main group, followed by Cho Chang, Cormac McLaggen and Oliver Wood. "Mr Thomas, the Headmaster's office. Ms Patil, the kitchens. Find the house-elves. Everyone else, with me." She hit Bulstrode, who was fighting Justin, straight in the back with a stun. "Mr Finch-Fletchely," she said in the tone of one who'd dearly like to hex _him_ too, "are those students?"

He shrugged, severing the leg of an Acromantula with a slicing hex and yelling back over the sound of a falling suit of armour. "They're all of age. We barricaded the rest in the common rooms."

A small ginger girl who couldn't have been a day over fifteen jumped and cheered when a suit of armour speared an Acromantula before smashing it against a wall.

Justin stopped the motion of his wand, stared at the girl, and then looked back at McGonagall, making a face. "She," he said, "is not my fault."

With the bulk of the Order's forces inside the school and with the castle's defences working with them, it was almost easy to believe that all they had to do in order to succeed was keep going. There weren't enough Death Eaters inside Hogwarts to take on an army — even an army such as theirs — and if their luck had held another hour, they could've taken the school with barely any losses. Alas, they were not that lucky, and it was just as well. That hadn't been the plan.

Hermione almost growled in frustration when Death Eaters started Apparating inside the castle. Apparently no one had told them that it wasn't possible to Apparate in and out of Hogwarts. She hit a masked figure with a stun and kept running, ignoring the commotion behind her. The first group into the castle had yet to find the Horcrux. There was no point in taking on Voldemort unless they could destroy the blasted thing.

Two Death Eaters Apparated right in front of her and Hermione stopped short, casting a shield just in time to block the barrage of curses and jinxes throw at her. There were two of them and just one of her, and she couldn't stop defending long enough to cast anything back. When she felt movement behind her, she knew she was done for. Hermione braced for the curse she knew was coming, but a rush of air blew past her and one of the Death Eaters was thrown half way across the corridor. It was all the opening she needed to stun the second one.

Her heart skipped a beat when she turned to find another masked man standing only a few feet from her, but she didn't need to recognise the elaborate carvings of the mask to know him.

"Voldemort's here," she said. It wasn't a question.

"Yes," Malfoy said, taking off his mask. "He's looking for Dumbledore. The Horcrux is in the Room of Hidden Things."

Of course it was. Generations of Hogwarts students had used the place to hide everything and anything, from the mundane to the embarrassing, to the dangerous and illegal. Why would Tom Riddle have been any different?

They rushed to the seventh floor, ignoring the chaos all around them — bangs and explosions and flashes of light. Everywhere people were running or fighting or dying, or all three. There were bodies sprawled on the floor or half buried under collapsed walls, and no one was casting stuns anymore.

The sound of the battle receded as they moved to the higher floors. By the time Hermione spotted George, they could no longer hear anything from the battle raging in the castle below.

George wasn't alone. The boy sitting on the floor next to him — a young Gryffindor Hermione didn't know — pushed to his feet with a grimace and pointed his wand at them, but George merely lifted an eyebrow at Malfoy.

"Friend of yours?" he asked Hermione.

She stopped between Draco and the boy, her wand by her side. "He's one of us. He's been working for the Order all along."

"I'd pretend to be shocked, but Dumbledore always did love a good farce. Lower your wand, Oliver."

But Oliver held his ground. "He's one of them," he said stubbornly. "His lot killed my brother."

George rolled his eyes, pushing away from the wall and placing a hand on the boy's arm. "His lot killed a lot of people's brothers. Now lower your fucking wand or I'll drag you back to Gryffindor Tower myself."

"The Horcrux is in the Room of Requirement," Draco said, and George nodded.

"Figured as much. There's half a dozen Dementors guarding it." To Oliver, he added, "Go. Find anyone who can cast a Patronus and send them our way."

"Can you?" Hermione asked quietly as they headed towards the Room of Requirement. She couldn't see the Dementors yet, but she could feel them — fear and dread tugging at her brain, prickling her skin, spreading like ice through her veins.

"No," George said, peering around a corner and motioning for them to stop. George's Patronus had been a magpie, once upon a time. So had Fred's.

Draco chanced a glance at the Dementors as well, before stepping back. "Six of them. Maybe more. Go back, Weasley. You're no use here," he said, but George merely scoffed. "Suit yourself. I take three, you take three?" he asked Hermione, who was frantically trying to think of a memory bright enough and happy enough to fight off the despair building inside her. "Hermione." Draco touched his fingers to hers, the lightest of touches, and some of the ice receded.

"Yeah," she said, her throat dry.

Harry and Ron. Christmas in the Burrow. The look on her parents' faces every time she stepped off the Hogwarts Express. Something else too, someone else. The memory of it was gone, she couldn't picture it anymore, but she could still call up the feeling, could still feel the warmth of it spreading through her.

"Expecto Patronum!"

Her Patronus skipped through the air in a trail of light, followed by Malfoy's almost identical one. She had no time to wonder at it.

The moment they stepped into view, the Dementors were on them. Two Patronuses weren't enough for so many Dementors, and if Hermione had felt their influence before, that was nothing to the wall of misery and anguish that hit her the moment they focused their attention on her. It became increasingly hard to sustain her Patronus, increasingly hard to believe that anything good had ever or could ever happen. The whole world was made of grief and sorrow, and nothing would ever be right again.

Of the three of them, George was the least affected, casting jinxes and hexes with the reckless abandon of one who didn't need to be close to a Dementor to know that the world was made of nothing but grief and sorrow. He'd known that already.

Hermione tried hard to hold on to the bright things inside of her, tried hard to resist the inexorable pull of the Dementors' power. Draco's Patronus flickered before vanishing entirely, and he just stood there, surrounded by Dementors, his wand still by his side.

"Malfoy," Hermione yelled, directing her otter at the head of the Dementor closest to her. "Draco, snap out of it."

George set one of the Dementors closing in on Draco on fire, but even that wasn't enough to get his attention or to get the Dementors to back off. Hermione backed towards him, her own Patronus quickly losing shape.

The moment it disappeared, the small, bright light still burning inside her went out. And perhaps it was just as well. Harry and Ron were dead, and the Burrow was gone, and her parents would never know her again. All the people she'd loved, all the people who'd made her life happy and bright and worth living, they were gone. The world had already burnt to the ground. Even if they won, they'd already lost, so what was the point?

A Dementor stood only a few inches from Hermione, close enough for her to feel its icy breath on her skin. It lifted its skeletal hands to pull back its hood, and Hermione could not bring herself to move. She could not even bring herself to care.

In that moment the floor and the walls started shaking, and a terrible sound echoed throughout the castle as if Hogwarts itself had come awake. The whole world froze for a split second, and then a large Patronus appeared out of nowhere, galloping towards them. The large silver stag was closely followed by a Jack Russell Terrier, a phoenix and a magpie. The Dementors scattered before the incoming Patronuses, and then immediately gave chase, rushing after them and away from their stunned prey.

"Fred." George's voice startled Hermione, and she turned to see him staring at a barely corporeal Fred Weasley, who smiled brightly at his twin.

"When I said the only way you were growing a beard was over my dead body, I did not mean that literally, Georgie."

George's choked laugh at that sounded suspiciously like a sob.

"I'm here too, if anyone cares," Ron said, floating close by. "Remember me? Also your beloved brother? Where are my tears of joy?"

"How is it possible?" Draco muttered next to Hermione, staring at the apparitions that were almost, but not quite ghosts — too insubstantial, too bright, wavering between being there and not and back again.

"Well, it's magic, innit?" Ron said, grinning.

"You look like you've seen a ghost." Harry smiled, and Hermione could've killed him, could've killed them both, for dying and leaving her all alone, and appearing now out of nowhere, cracking jokes.

"How?" she asked. There was magic, and then there was this.

Harry shrugged. "Dumbledore being Dumbledore."

Dumbledore wasn't this powerful. No one was. No mortal could wield this sort of magic, not even him. But Hermione was standing next to an impossible room of endless possibilities, in a castle where staircases moved on their own, and rooms and hallways sprang fully formed overnight. Dumbledore wasn't this powerful, but Hogwarts was, and while Dumbledore was just one more custodian in a long line of illustrious men and women who'd served the school, clearly the castle liked to play favourites with its headmasters.

Harry, Ron and Fred turned their heads towards one end of the corridor, as if they'd heard something.

"Find the Horcrux," Harry said, "We can't hold him for long." He jumped in place as if on a trampoline, and dove down, disappearing through the stone floor.

"Wait for me," Ron said, and he too was gone.

"Come on, George, race you."

George took off after Fred, who glided down the corridor, wondering loudly if they had time to find Peeves and get him to drop the school's entire cauldron supply on top of the Death Eaters. A cauldron to the head, now that had to hurt, right? Couldn't hurt him, of course — it would fly right through — but it might crack a Death Eater's skull or two, and wasn't that just a capital idea?

"Come on," Draco said, turning towards the Room of Requirement, and Hermione forced herself to focus, forced herself to ignore the knot in her throat.

* * *

Harry, Ron and Fred weren't the only miracles spun out of the combined power of Hogwarts's ancestral magic and Albus Dumbledore's unshakable belief that there was very little one could not accomplish with a little determination and just enough disregard for consequences.

The headmaster died on top of the Astronomy Tower, the highest point in the castle, finally crushed under the sheer amount of power required to sustain the spell. While it held, however, the forces of the Order of the Phoenix doubled in number, bolstered by the spectres of those who'd fallen once before to Death Eater wands and Death Eater spells.

They were but shadows, nowhere as powerful as their living counterparts, but their presence was enough to boost the morale of everyone else. Molly Weasley held her ground with fierce resolve, surrounded by her husband and children; George and Fred fought back to back like they always had, dispatching trolls and Acromantulas and Death Eaters with ruthless efficiency.

Everywhere Hermione looked she could see the echo of someone's fallen friend or lover or loved one. She saw Hannah Abbott and Katie Bell, and everyone who'd died the night the Sigma cell had collapsed; she saw James and Lily Potter and Marlene McKinnon and Benjy Fenwick, and all the other members of the original Order of the Phoenix, who'd died so long ago in a different war. She saw Tabitha Jorkins.

The battle raged on for what felt like hours, with both sides trying to claw their way to a victory that seemed just close enough to touch, but that kept being just out of reach. And then Neville ran Voldemort through with Gryffindor's Sword, and it was over.

What Death Eaters still lived quickly Disapparated, knowing when to cut their losses. They'd never be able to run far enough away. Hermione would personally make sure of that.

Voldemort was dead, and the Death Eaters were gone, and nothing remained of Dumbledore's army of ghosts but the people they'd left behind and George Weasley's loud sobs.

Hermione looked around her at the wreckage. There was broken glass everywhere, and half-collapsed walls, and the air smelled of blood and smoke. The room was littered with fallen bodies, people for whom there had been no miracles. Justin Finch-Fletchley lay staring at the ceiling, his eyes unblinking and unseeing; Angelina Johnson was half buried under a pile of rubble, her hair matted with blood.

Hermione hadn't realised she was frantically looking for someone until she spotted Draco a few feet away, and then she was moving before she'd even decided to. He staggered backwards when she slammed into him, but quickly regained his balance, wrapping his arms around her.

"You're alive," she said, her voice muffled against his robes. "You're— You're alive."

He breathed out a sigh and kissed her temple, his arms tight around her.

"Are you hurt?" he asked.

"I'm fine. I just—" She just needed a minute.

There were things he hadn't told her, things she couldn't remember. Hermione knew enough to know that, and she knew enough — could feel enough — to hazard a guess as to what those things were. It didn't change a thing of what had happened afterwards, of course — the Death Eaters, and Nevin Square, and questions asked deep in the Ministry's dungeons — but just now she couldn't bring herself to care. They were alive, and she had time to figure it out. That's the one thing she never thought she'd have.

Halfway across the room, Molly Weasley knelt down next to George, her one surviving child, and pulled him to her, smiling through the tears. Everywhere around them, people were laughing and crying and hugging each other, relieved and exhausted and glad — that it was over, that they were alive. A time would come for them to mourn their dead, to grieve for all the things they'd lost. For now they were just glad.

Hermione turned her head just enough to see Fawkes land on Professor McGonagall's arm. Outside, the sun was rising over the grounds.

* * *

 **The End**


End file.
